Pinkbike Poll: Re-cycling?
Being a bit of an eco-warrior at heart (yes, I'm sorry about all the airplane travel) which got me thinking about recycling. Over the last few years, there has been a global push to put your plastic bottles in one bin, paper in another, and glass in another. One great thing about mountain biking, and one of the main reasons I fell for it, was nature. We get to head out into beautiful forests and mountains, exotic locations and mind blowing scenery. But there's a big downside to all of this, which is potentially leading us towards these places not existing in the future.
![reduce reuse recycle buy recycled]()
While riding a bike is one of the cleanest ways to travel through nature. Mountain bike production isn't a clean industry, carbon is dirty, and leaves you with a material that has next to nil options for re-use. Aluminium can be recycled, although getting the ore from the bottom of a big hole and into a bike frame isn't easy. Packaging of shiny products is also wasteful, plastic wrap, cardboard and zip ties, plus the average shop is desperate to get your new grips into a bag with their logo swathed across it before you walk out the door. I can't imagine the number of super tacky rubbers I threw in the trash in my downhill days, I'm guessing well into the hundreds? Car tires are renowned as a big waste issue, but I can count the amount of those I have worn to the the wire on one hand? What about shipping your sled from Taiwan and then getting it to your door? Then we have turning chairlifts and driving machinery to carve new trails into hillsides?
There's plenty more to consider like flying to foreign destinations, driving up and down the country for a two hour spin, and then those that drop energy gel sachets and leave tubes beside the trail.
Generally in my life I try to make conscious decisions about this kind of thing, but when it comes to bikes I'm always blinded by the shiny new stuff and the allure of new locations. Environmental impact is left way, way back in the depths of my mind. Does any of this waste ever cross your mind? Do you take old tires to the local dump for recycling? What about taking old metal components to the local scrap yard? You might even get a few pennies back for the weight? What about handing down parts to younger riders, or various companies and charities that renovate bikes for the under-privileged?
While riding a bike is one of the cleanest ways to travel through nature. Mountain bike production isn't a clean industry, carbon is dirty, and leaves you with a material that has next to nil options for re-use. Aluminium can be recycled, although getting the ore from the bottom of a big hole and into a bike frame isn't easy. Packaging of shiny products is also wasteful, plastic wrap, cardboard and zip ties, plus the average shop is desperate to get your new grips into a bag with their logo swathed across it before you walk out the door. I can't imagine the number of super tacky rubbers I threw in the trash in my downhill days, I'm guessing well into the hundreds? Car tires are renowned as a big waste issue, but I can count the amount of those I have worn to the the wire on one hand? What about shipping your sled from Taiwan and then getting it to your door? Then we have turning chairlifts and driving machinery to carve new trails into hillsides?
There's plenty more to consider like flying to foreign destinations, driving up and down the country for a two hour spin, and then those that drop energy gel sachets and leave tubes beside the trail.
Generally in my life I try to make conscious decisions about this kind of thing, but when it comes to bikes I'm always blinded by the shiny new stuff and the allure of new locations. Environmental impact is left way, way back in the depths of my mind. Does any of this waste ever cross your mind? Do you take old tires to the local dump for recycling? What about taking old metal components to the local scrap yard? You might even get a few pennies back for the weight? What about handing down parts to younger riders, or various companies and charities that renovate bikes for the under-privileged?
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Ride the bike like it's suposed to be and f*ck my english !!!
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Then, I either put them on another bike or cannibalize them for parts like "oooh, I bet the jockey wheels from this smashed mech will be useful someday", hence I have a box full of bike parts that are of little to no use, but I keep just in case, rather than throw away.
P.S. Am I the only one whose local shop is more than happy to accept people's worn tires for recycling?
P.P.S. All this talk about "recycling" seems very fitting for the "bicycling" community.
or rather "I buy used parts because I have kids and kids are f'n expensive!"
Lots of people review parts for reliability but some of them never actualy service them, they just sell them at the time they need service because they start to feel like crap. Then they come to the internet and say that the new new part is so much better than the previous....
The bike industry is also to blame. So much standards, so many wheel sizes, tire sizes....27+? C'mon, it looks like the front wheel of a motorcycle and these have a motor to make it turn....
I am taking advantage of this situation. I buy more and more less than a year used parts, service them and so I Re-Cycle!! :-D
Since I am in a cheerful mood, let me rephrase in an even more obnoxious way: if there were only a billion of us (still a crazy number) then we could drive rocket ships to work and eat steak every day. Mindlessly ratchet that to 12 billion, and we're fighting for toaster crumbs.
Want to make mountain biking sustainable? Stop having kids.
with sustainably designed systems you can close resource loops and make things balance out better. hemp can be an amazing part of that for sure, though thinking just hemp will save our earth is about as naive as thinking not having kids will.
But yeah, it's mostly gesturing from high horses because there's no profit to be made from real good world changing design, and change is hard
Let's start by having everyone here use city bikes instead of cars whenever possible? Without feeling superior and self righteous preferably.
I'm curious- what is it about reducing our birthrate that rankles both of you so much? What's the end game? 15 billion people, endless fields of hemp, and piles of compost? I don't see the appeal. And if your sustainability calculations are wrong? What then?
Also, there aren't 12 billion people, not even close. Also, don't know if you'd noticed but hemp is a weed, it'll grow anywhere. Too many people in the world? Rubbish. Go for a bike ride.. where is everyone??. The many are being manipulated in order to benefit the few. We don't have an overpopulation problem. We have an issue of a greedy ruling class. But if you're blinkered to that reality how about.. peoples kids are going to pay the price because they can't be without their $6000 mountain bike... and don't realise it could have been made out of hemp anyway. And it would have been lighter and stronger. And you could've grown the materials in your back yard. Instead of raping Africa. Just saying.
P.s. dontcoast.. what are you calling 'save our earth'? Because it doesn't really need saving, we do. And I need to understand what you mean, so I can't understand your placement of this idea that not having kids won't save the earth.
“Many people are unaware of the power of exponential population growth,” Murtaugh said. “Future growth amplifies the consequences of people’s reproductive choices today, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance.”
oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2009/jul/family-planning-major-environmental-emphasis
The Research:
blog.oregonlive.com/environment_impact/2009/07/carbon%20legacy.pdf
Start killing rich people.
Take their daughters.
And start the world again.
Quote: And if we can grow enough (we can't), what is going to stop us from cranking up the heat to 15 or 20 billion people?
Pretty sure the answer to your question is in your question. You put it in brackets.
Be a good lad/girl , wasteful living and surplus hurts you directly and immediately. Meet pople, visit places, enjoy life, it is too short to spend it working your ass off to buy stuff you don't need and then moan about it how bad it is to do it.
And "go for a bike ride, where's the people?" Really, that's your basis? It's bullshit arguments like this where people say "it's cold today, so much for global warming!"
Here is a rule of thumb: If you find yourself on this site worrying about the footprint of your cycling habit, don't breed. There are entire villages that consume less than you.
first off, a generally low birth rate is not something I have a problem with, on the contrary it makes sense to me. Education and family planning make sense. Carrying capacity is real.
I was just saying, "stop having kids" is damn close to "stop breeding" which I mostly have heard from eugenicists or others in very privileged positions, ranting about their superiority etc... It's the delivery that rankled me, and I think it will make anyone with kids or who is not a total misanthrope have a reaction.
That being said the whole carrying capacity concept you bring up is very important. I wish our "economics "scientists"" would wrap their heads around the nonsense of infinite growth, because that seems like a bigger leverage point than trying to tell individuals what to do...
@bicibicivelo I don't so much worry about my cycling habit...in fact my cycling habit is directly related to the fact I don't drive, which ~somewhat~ reduces my footprint, and yes, I am fully aware there are still villages that consume less than me.
@tobiusmaximum Ok, i'll rephrase that: "stop damaging our biosphere recklessly and work on meeting our needs responsibily"...now tell me about those resins you'll use to bond the hemp fiber bikes and their production. I am actually quite interested!
I work in a bike shop now, and the amount of waste I see is astonishing - we don't do that much servicing, but even so, the amount of old parts, tyres, tubes etc. that go in the bin is shocking, though we do our best to recycle it - take it to the scrappies etc. The bit that really gets me though is all the unnecessary plastic packing on products. It doesn't need to be there. Companies claim they're 'green', but punt out all this plastic crap which is inevitably just going to go to landfill 90% of the time. Does my head in, something really needs to change.
Today there is no carbon in the Commencal range, in today's market that seems unusual.
It's... It's complicated. We have produced Metas and hardtail frames in carbon in 2007-2008. I went to China to visit these factories. It was a shock for me, because the conditions were a disaster. The workers were working on frames with only paper masks. Kids, I say kids, but they are not kids because they are 18 or 20, are working there weaving the carbon fibre. It's dangerous. When you speak with their boss, he says, "in my factory you don't stay too long because your life might only be five years." So they work six months and they change. All the suppliers are asking for cheaper and cheaper carbon frames. When I came back, believe me, I was not comfortable. I said, I will lose sales, but I do not want to produce carbon. We produce aluminium frames, strong frames, it's a game and we are not there to... kill... only because we want to save 300g weight. So I said, "No, I don't want to produce carbon." I have produced carbon in Toulouse for Nico Vouilloz and Cedric Gracia, 15 or 20 years ago. But it was made in a room with no air in it, with people wearing protective equipment, and it's very expensive. In China, for me... I do not want to communicate on this, I only talk about this because you asked about it. I don't say that all factories are the same, maybe some are cleaner, but, for the moment... And we are working on some other technologies, you will see next year or the year after... With carbon you cannot repair it, you cannot recycle it. Too many bad things.
We retain most of the plastic bags, and if careful cutting the zip ties they can kept; as they are very useful in the future and at least are being re-used rather than heading straight to the refuse dump.
The cardboard is all recycled using a waste contractor.
The shop itself also puts out a lot of packaging waste from incoming deliveries from suppliers, as well as packaging removed from products bought by customers.
Bicycle servicing generally produces a much smaller volume of waste, which would typically be worn parts like brake pads, tires, chain, perhaps a wheel or some chainrings. We have a metal collector who collects this FOC as metal has scrap value in the UK, unlike rubber tires.
No one wants the rubber, it has no value. So it goes in the refuse
works for domestic waste but unfortunately for business you can't use a municipal domestic centre
The reality is, your actions will have a negative contribution in some shape or form in MTB, so best make up for it in other ways. Be that, supporting your local environmental agencies, giving to environmental causes or committing to lifestyle changes to reduce your impact.
communitycycles.org/about
Its a non profit which accepts used bike donations and volunteers take these bikes, fix em up and provide an excellent used bikes market. Not so many high end mountain bikes come through the doors but if you need a commuter its the best place to get one. They also have a lot of awesome program where if you volunteer a certain number of hours you can earn a bike, where you'll build your own bike up from donations, christmas bike giveaways for little kids, all kinds of stuff. Can't speak highly enough about it.
That being said back when i lived down in Colorado Springs, we didn't have an organization like that but a few of my buddies from the shop would just go down to the parks where the homeless gathered and fix up their bikes and we collected abandoned bikes from shops and 'recycled' them as working bikes for the homeless. Bikes are absolutely the most reusable objects on the planet. There's absolutely no reason a functional piece of a bike should be sent to a landfill. There's enough people on Pinkbike with the skills that, hey you know what, the next time you see that bike thats been abandoned for the last unpteen months, grab that sucker and give it some love and then give it to someone. Go save the planet and make someone's day.
Carbon is making me a little less smug about being a recycler. They always get sold after a season so they are being reused, but should I have chosen aluminium instead?
nsmba.ca/content/2012-03_2015-gear-swap
Happy Earth Day!
X-Enduro Boost 32.5" Plus
People like this doing illegal deals:
mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?referrer=&_r=0
news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/042715-749773-green-movement-in-california-moves-left.htm
Recycle packaging / envelopes too