How green is your bike? Print
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Thursday, 03 September 2009 09:23

The bike you ride should be a durable, repairable, functional machine with a minimal ecological footprint. And it must give you value for money. A ‘green bike' does all those things.

Trevor King, a mechanic at an iconic Melbourne bike shop, doesn't believe bikes are just another consumable item, no matter how much or how little they cost. A bike should be a durable, repairable, functional machine for personal transport that lasts, with a minimal ecological footprint. Having worked in all aspects of the cycling industry for 24 years, King is unashamedly enthusiastic about the up-take of all varieties of cycling in recent times, but he does have some misgivings.

Cycling Green Bike


"People are sometimes sucked in to acquiring a machine that is marketed towards them as a commuter that does a complete disservice to their hip-pocket, because the components aren't durable or resilient, or sometimes even repairable."

So what's the issue here? What is a green bike? If a bike is the cheapest form of personal transport going around, does it have to be durable as well?

There is no doubt that more and more people are commuting by bike more often, using bikes as cheap personal transport and getting healthy in the process. The growth in new-bike sales is good for our health, and the economy. But there are bike retailers who would suggest that the bike you ride may have an in-built, environmentally hazardous obsolescence that will initially surprise and then disappoint you.

Huw Vellacott runs Commuter Cycles in Brunswick, in suburban Melbourne. He loves dynamo hubs because they last, they don't need batteries, which end up in landfill, and they do the job well.

Talking about affordable, quality bikes for commuting, Vellacott doesn't pull any punches: "Bikes that aren't sold by bike shops," Vellacott says, "are usually terrible, because they're set up incorrectly, and the consumable parts on them aren't replaceable when they wear out. The bike just doesn't do the job it's meant to do.

"These bikes cost resources to produce, and yet being made of as much plastic as metal, nothing lasts on them. These bikes are a mirage, they look like a bike, but they actually aren't one.

"The conversation I always try to have with people about buying bikes," he says, "is that anything less than a certain price range will leave them disillusioned. Spend between $500 and $1000 on a bike from a bike shop, and the parts will last longer, tyres won't puncture so often, and so on.

"Above all," he emphasises, "don't get a cheap bike and say to yourself you'll replace the parts that are of lower quality ... it's a false economy. It doesn't make sense from either a sustainability or value perspective. The bike you need for daily use is a combination of value for money, designed and built in a durable manner, and above all, it must suit the function for which it is intended."

Here's a Commuter Cycles customer story. Melanie is a full-time mature-age university student. Two part-time jobs are barely enough to cover her expenses. She rides a bike everywhere, because it's the most economical option for getting around. Recently the chain on her bike began to mysteriously slip off the middle chain ring; the only solution was to get a whole new crank set, with replaceable chain rings. When she bought the bike, she had no idea about the limited life of one-piece non-replaceable chain rings, but now she knows a lot more. With the new replaceable chain ring set-up Melanie added durability to her bike. Melanie now rides a ‘green bike'.


What sort of solutions does ‘green biking' require? If you're looking at getting into cycling, ‘old faithful', gathering dust in the shed, might be fine, with a few components replaced and some air in the tyres. But if there isn't an old bike to resuscitate, and only a new bike will do, find out if your favoured bike brand is a staunch advocate of sustainable manufacturing. And there's always the second-hand option.

Human Powered Cycles in Thornbury, Melbourne, is a passionate advocate of the ‘repair not replace' philosophy in bike maintenance, and it runs regular bike maintenance courses for customers to encourage them to keep their bikes for as long as possible.

At first glance Human Powered Cycles appears to be just another bike shop, doing the typical things of selling new bikes, parts and accessories, with a bustling and busy workshop out the back. Bill Bretherton, who is a co-director at the shop, will disabuse you of that initial perception. For a start, Human Powered contracts local suppliers for parts to reduce carbon kilometres, contracts a local office-cleaning service that uses a minimum of chemical cleaning products, tries to repair and not replace parts - if safe to do so - on the bikes it services, and most of all, Human Powered actively engages in the surrounding community, particularly the local asylum-seeker resource centre, with free bikes for recently arrived asylum seekers.

"It's good that more new bikes are coming on the market every year," Bretherton says, "because that equals more people taking up cycling, but at the same time it's problematic, because there are so many bikes already available, as a second-hand option. But the Australian bicycle market is behind world-best practice ... we're particularly behind Europe where trade-ins of bikes are the norm, and there is a really vibrant second-hand bike market there.

"Because bikes are based on such simple engineering principles and technology, they are inherently 99.9 per cent recyclable - there's not much that isn't recyclable on a bike."

Metal drive-train parts that wear out can be sent to a metal recycler, and if the frame is sound it can be the basis of a new bike. But sometimes a new bike is the only way to get into cycling. Starting out in the professional world of bike racing in the 1970s, Richard Ayling has been involved in design, bike sales distribution, race team management, and nine years ago, the development of his Allegro range of track, touring, city, and single-speed bikes. Personal philosophies about the size of his footprint on the earth inform every aspect of his development and manufacturing practice. At the two sites at which his bikes are manufactured, in Taiwan and Italy, parts are sourced from within the shortest radius of each plant, reducing the carbon kilometres.

"Everyone has a carbon imprint," he says, "but what I am trying to do is to minimise the extent of my carbon imprint in the goods that I produce. I'm not carbon-neutral, but I strive to reduce the effect I have on the environment.

"Economic concerns are the major reason that people are getting into cycling," he says. "They may have a slight warm fuzzy feeling that they are doing something for the environment, but it's secondary to the economics of getting into cycling, when it is stacked up against more expensive personal transport options."

Trevor King believes ‘green bikes' are not hard to achieve. "On the whole, bikes are now more sophisticated, and if you're doing more than 100 kilometres a week, on a $800 to $1000 bike, it's actually as durable as grandad's bike ... but only if you maintain it properly."


Greener than green

When Craig Calfee designed his first bamboo bike, it was as a publicity stunt, but even he was surprised by how good it was to ride. He decided to start producing them. Calfee has good pedigree in the cycling community, having pioneered the use of carbon fibre, the gold standard for elite bicycle frames since the '90s.

The owner of Calfee Design in California, he is now building bamboo racing, mountain and cargo bikes. Bikes don't come any greener than this. Bamboo grows extremely quickly, requires minimal pesticides and water, and produces plenty of oxygen. Even the joints on the bike are made of natural hemp. Sales of the bikes have been growing since 2005 when Calfee first began designing them.

"Cyclists already send a green message by riding a bike," he told Australian Cyclist. "Riding a bamboo bike sets an even better example and invariably gets people talking about it from an environmentally friendly perspective."



Test your bike's green credentials

If you want to ride a ‘green bike', here is what to look for in the bike you already have or the bike you might be wishing for. (Like energy ratings, the more stars the better.)

1. The bike is not bought from a reputable bike shop.

2. The bike is from a bike shop, but the drive-train and brakes are mostly plastic.

3. Most of the parts are replaceable, especially the drive-train; the frame is aluminium (aluminium is a ‘dirty' industry).

4. The parts are not only replaceable, they are durable, and will last well with regular maintenance; the frame is steel.

5. The bike has weekly maintenance, and any problems can be discussed at the local bike shop; the frame is aluminium or steel.

6. The parts are durable because they are properly maintained; the bikes suits the function that it is mostly used for; over a long period you get value for money from your bike; the frame is recycled carbon/aluminium/steel.