Is cycling anywhere near as green as it could be ?

[cyberknight]

None of us are green, no matter how much we like to think. Everyone of us needs to eat, cloth ourselves, have somewhere to live and even with the most basic of human comforts (Which most of us far exceed, cars, phones, bicycles, computers, TVs etc) we all contribute to climate change simply by existing.

Climate change is caused by there being far too many of us for the planet to sustain long term. It will rebalance when it causes most of us to die and cuts our number to an amount that allows Co2 levels to fall. It ain't gonna be pretty.

my company has "eco" months so we are expected to come up with ideas to make the job more "green", uhm we use gigawatts of electric and all manner of other stuff to make things that need expensive hard to extract metals and petrol to make them go ......

 

[snorri]

Pro cycling is an environmental nightmare!

Whilst amateur sport cycling is only a bad dream.

 

[steveindenmark]

I think the best you can say is that cycling is greener than some sports or pastimes. The end may not be niegh for the planet, but it is on the way. The guy outside Hull Paragon Station with his sandwich board in the 70s was way beyond his time

 

[classic33]

I think the best you can say is that cycling is greener than some sports or pastimes. The end may not be niegh for the planet, but it is on the way. The guy outside Hull Paragon Station with his sandwich board in the 70s was way beyond his time

Not a local then.

 

[Drago]

Methane emissions will rise whether they cycle or drive.
Methane doing more damage, than Co2, to the atmosphere.

Indeed, as a greenhouse gas its over 60 times worse than CO2.

 

[tyred]

Humans are in a class of our own in terms of the damage we do to our environment.

We developed clothes and invented fire to stay warm and live in places where we couldn't survive otherwise. We've developed efficient methods of growing food at the expense of other species. We've invented machines to allow us to travel considerably further in a day than we could ever walk (and use them to drive two hundred yards for a newspaper!). We ship all sorts of food around the world rather than just eat whatever we have locally. We've invented artificial lighting to allow us to work when we couldn't otherwise have done. We've invented machines, laid cables, created aerials and sent satellites into space so we can talk to someone on the other side of the globe.

We're happy to harvest the world's natural resources and pollute our own atmosphere just to have a coal fire, a sixty inch telly, a sixty Watt light bulb and a Ford Mondeo. We not only destroy other species but also kill huge amounts of our own just to protect our rights and property.

Some are worse than others but very few humans live a genuinely low impact life. I'd like to say I do but I know I'm little better than anyone else in the great scheme of things.

 

[boydj]

I look at all the fashion items, the bike that are usable and being scrapped, the parts that only fit one bike model, the annoyance of going to shops to buy parts they don't not have as there are loads of different ones and i wonder........is this industry reacting at all to global warming or is it just sitting on its arse and saying `we are a green industry ?'

I think the bike industry is a lot more standardised than some. While there is a large number of bike manufacturers, the bikes they supply use a very limited set of components from a very small number of manufacturers, and Shimano has the largest share of the market. There are a fair number of aftermarket specialists, but the components they sell still mostly meet the standards used by the original suppliers, though usually at a higher quality.

 

[Arrowfoot]

No it hasn't.

The world's population is increasing by over 265,000 per day. How the hell is that not going to increase carbon emmisions?

https://countrymeters.info/en/World#:~:text=The population of World will be increasing by,compared to population of 7,756,041,003 the yearbefore.

Are we talking about cycling and its contribution to going green as per title and OP's content? Suggest you start another post on World population and its issues.

 

[Brooks]

I volunteer at a charity bike workshop and it's extremely satisfying to transform an old bike given as gift aid into a useful usable utility bike.
Lots of people use their old bikes as their main transport option, is cycling green? Of course it is. I've not owned a car for 6 years and I now cycle nearly everywhere. Another bloke that volunteers has an old Claude Butler that he's had for 30+ years, these type of people are an inspiration to me, simple bikes used everyday nothing could be greener.

 

[Oldhippy]

As above providing you don't break the frame irreparably a bike will just recycle again and again. This should be the norm.

 

[mudsticks]

I look at all the fashion items, the bike that are usable and being scrapped, the parts that only fit one bike model, the annoyance of going to shops to buy parts they don't not have as there are loads of different ones and i wonder........is this industry reacting at all to global warming or is it just sitting on its arse and saying `we are a green industry ?'

Of course it could do better, all industries could..

Cycling as a way of getting about, and having fun, is in and of itself pretty low impact.


But like all industries the bike one is operating in the world as it exists.

Which is largely driven by capitalism and consumerism.

Persuading people that whatever they have, probably isn't 'enough'

Hence 'enough' bikes formula = n currently owned +1

Which is still being promoted as 'the only way' to run the world - endless growth, and consumption.

Which is of course nuts on a finitely resourced planet.

Always has been.

I'm sure the bike industry could do a whole lot better, than it currently does, without going all 'hair shirt' over it and putting people off altogether.

As ever it requires an approach from many angles..
Us as consumers..

Hopefully being moderate and discerning ones.
And doing more bike riding, than bike shopping.

Governments ,and businesses doing their bit to make greener cycling the easier and pleasanter 'default' choice.

But we have to persuade them that it's worthwhile, and support / promote it in the long term.

 

[DCBassman]

None of us are green, no matter how much we like to think. Everyone of us needs to eat, cloth ourselves, have somewhere to live and even with the most basic of human comforts (Which most of us far exceed, cars, phones, bicycles, computers, TVs etc) we all contribute to climate change simply by existing.

Climate change is caused by there being far too many of us for the planet to sustain long term. It will rebalance when it causes most of us to die and cuts our number to an amount that allows Co2 levels to fall. It ain't gonna be pretty.

This. Until there are far fewer humans, climate change is an absolute disastrous certainty, which no amount of otherwise good policy will do much to change.
The green bits we DO need to focus on are things like poisoning everything, including ourselves, with microplastics.

 

[Boopop]

Is cycling as green as it could be? No, probably not.

That said however, it's akin to asking whether the safety scissors that are in the childproof locker under the sink are as safe as possible while there's a raving loon outside running about with a sub-machine gun and fifty magazines of ammunition.

 

[Dr Bryn]

As with anything there is a price to pay. Manufacturing systems, by their very nature will cause pollution to some degree. Applying this mode of thought to cycle components is a thorny issue. Campagnolo, taken as a single example, are complicating “green issues” to a large extent. Placing components on the market place that are not compatable with each other. Driving up prices, causing reusable components inert, not very environmentally friendly, in this age of make do and mend. Returning to the start of this reply...we all pay a price.

 

[chriswoody]

My wife bought up an interesting point about my Kona the other day, after seeing the Dot 5 braking fluid and the latex tire sealant that it uses she remarked that these new bikes aren't terribly environmentally friendly. She has a point and I certainly do wonder about full suspension carbon fibre bikes, how long do they last in the real world, what happens to them in the long run? do they become landfill? The Kona, has at least a steel frame and relatively standard fittings, it was bought with half a mind to the future and hopefully will continue to run for decades.

Compared to my daily ride which has a coaster brake and single speed it is a world of difference in it's impact, though it's still tiny compared to a car.