Das Bus Debuts Its First Solar Powered Photo Booth!

We’re so thrilled to share that last month we successfully tested our solar power setup and ran the photo booth exclusively on energy from the sun! The photo booth ran nonstop for six hours straight and actually GAINED power by the end of the day due to it being a gorgeous sunny day on Treasure Island!

Das Bus at Treasure Fest last month debuting the solar setup!

This has been a dream of ours for a long time to integrate clean energy and more sustainable operations into our business and we’re so excited that we’ve succeeded with solar! 

Obviously, this is only a drop in the bucket. With last year’s scorching summer temperatures here in the Bay Area, the effects of climate change are devastatingly clear and the damage we have created will continue taking it’s toll. We’ve been taking inventory of our personal and professional ecological footprints and are making changes where we can. This means purchasing our equipment and supplies from environmentally responsible distributors that utilize recycled or refurbished materials and recycling and reusing all of our own waste. We are currently in the process of phasing out cheaper synthetic costume supplies from Amazon in favor of vintage or hand-made items (we do plan to use everything we currently have until it’s out-worn and either recycle or repurpose elsewhere). 

This set up is currently only available on our 1966 bus, but we hope to expand by next year and have another solar system for our 1959 bus. Of course, our beautiful buses still use regular gasoline to drive, but we do have our sights set on an electric conversion in the future! We are lucky that our business is small and was initially created in a way that is self-sustaining, mobile, and compact. But there is always room too improve and embrace consciousness where we can. We’re excited to continue on this path of sustainability and love contributing to a community which celebrates and supports this kind of progress!

Solar Update as of 4.22.18: We've successfully run the photo booth exclusively on solar power at four separate events lasting 4 - 8 hours. With the leftover energy we've run an extension cord from our loft in Oakland to the solar system in the bus and are powering our lights and small electronics in the house. Waste nothing!