Cycling UK Forum

Pretty well everything has some environmental pact (what someone else does is always worse than my activities, it seems).

Even a good old pushbike without a motor costs something in its manufacture: making the steel (much more so if carbon), bits of plastic and nylon, tyres, oil, possibly leather. Steel is pretty well endlessly recyclable, carbon with supreme difficulty.

Most of us are learning after a lifetime of ignorance.

You are living with them if you buy any imported goods.

Is "living with" the same as "making use of"?

Good thing my non-computer using wife will not see this thread

Grandad wrote:

You are living with them if you buy any imported goods.

Is "living with" the same as "making use of"?

Good thing my non-computer using wife will not see this thread

We could just say "dependant upon"!

Oldjohnw wrote:Pretty well everything has some environmental pact (what someone else does is always worse than my activities, it seems).

Even a good old pushbike without a motor costs something in its manufacture: making the steel (much more so if carbon), bits of plastic and nylon, tyres, oil, possibly leather. Steel is pretty well endlessly recyclable, carbon with supreme difficulty.

Most of us are learning after a lifetime of ignorance.

ISTR seeing figures which showed the impact of a carbon frame to be not much more than that of a steel one, with aluminium being far worse than either, presumably due to the large amounts of energy needed to smelt aluminium from ore. Only vague recollection though.

Bmblbzzz wrote:

Oldjohnw wrote:Pretty well everything has some environmental pact (what someone else does is always worse than my activities, it seems).

Even a good old pushbike without a motor costs something in its manufacture: making the steel (much more so if carbon), bits of plastic and nylon, tyres, oil, possibly leather. Steel is pretty well endlessly recyclable, carbon with supreme difficulty.

Most of us are learning after a lifetime of ignorance.

ISTR seeing figures which showed the impact of a carbon frame to be not much more than that of a steel one, with aluminium being far worse than either, presumably due to the large amounts of energy needed to smelt aluminium from ore. Only vague recollection though.

Depends what you view as "impact"; there is carbon footprint, and then there is the depletion of resources, and the disposal of waste.

So for example, making batteries can have the side-effect of using up precious Lithium (I think there are rarer metals used in batteries, but I forget which right now!), so one might argue this is "Bad".
Also, metal frames can be recycled, but carbon fibre is very nearly impossible to recycle.

Then there are the complexities of things like mono-cultures, the horrible scarring that quarrying/mining creates, the damage to certain cultures where things are grown/extracted etc etc.


Carbon footprint is a big deal, but there are other factors.

My point really is that it's always easy to point at everyone else. But we all deplete resources and contribute to pollution at some point.

Apparently carbon fibre is being recycled - seems there is a lot of attention being given to this now due to the extensive use of it already. Just read that quite bit of it that was used in airliners is reaching the end of it's life so will need to be either recycled or disposed of.

Dave

paddler wrote:Apparently carbon fibre is being recycled - seems there is a lot of attention being given to this now due to the extensive use of it already. Just read that quite bit of it that was used in airliners is reaching the end of it's life so will need to be either recycled or disposed of.

Dave

That "apparently" is suspicious! You're not in PR are you??

Tiny amounts are. Unless you have any good examples?

(The only one I know of is Airbus - who may produce more of the stuff than any company on earth - have made some partition curtains in their factories from old CF. An applaud-able effort, but just a drop in the ocean, sadly.

http://www.jeccomposites.com/directory/ ... -fibre-ltd
http://www.elgcf.com/about/what-we-do
http://terratechmedia.com/boomtime/
etc

The problem with recycling carbon fibre is that, AIUI, the recycled product is low value compared to new material and --- in terms of bikes and other 'small' consumer products, how many broken frames actually get disposed of responsibly? The answer is equally low for metal frames, I expect. Probably a far greater percentage of used c.f. is recycled from aerospace applications than bikes. Kind of like Oldjohnw said...

Bmblbzzz wrote:http://www.jeccomposites.com/directory/recycled-carbon-fibre-ltd
http://www.elgcf.com/about/what-we-do
http://terratechmedia.com/boomtime/
etc

The problem with recycling carbon fibre is that, AIUI, the recycled product is low value compared to new material and --- in terms of bikes and other 'small' consumer products, how many broken frames actually get disposed of responsibly? The answer is equally low for metal frames, I expect. Probably a far greater percentage of used c.f. is recycled from aerospace applications than bikes. Kind of like Oldjohnw said...

I was really just making the point that it is at a stage further forward than "almost impossible to recycle", but yes, I realise bike frames won't necessarily get recycled until it is widely available.

The TerraTechMedia page was the one I was referring to. There is obviously going to be huge amounts of waste carbon fibre around pretty soon, so a good quick way of reusing it will have to be developed.
The article says recycled is worth around half that of virgin - and takes a tenth of the energy to produce.

Regarding steel frames there must be thousands that could be kept going, just as long as they can be rescued in time. Things are too easy to throw away!

paddler wrote: Regarding steel frames there must be thousands that could be kept going, just as long as they can be rescued in time. Things are too easy to throw away!

Yup - whereas cf frames will definitely degrade over time/mileage. (even if they are not catastrophically crashed).

Oldjohnw wrote: Steel is pretty well endlessly recyclable, carbon with supreme difficulty.

Not just steel is easy to recycle but aluminium and I'd presume titanium too. And magnesium, if anyone has an old Kirk Precision...

Bmblbzzz wrote:Not just steel is easy to recycle but aluminium and I'd presume titanium too. And magnesium, if anyone has an old Kirk Precision...

Please keep me out of this. I have one

Lucky you!

Morning all; back in the UK again (yesterday's Roscoff to Plymouth ferry crossing) for a week.

Most might know that I'm now living pretty much 'off-grid' in France: no car, telephone, television, washing machine, microwave, nor much else either. 12km each way to the nearest shop keeps my legs in trim, and the 600km each way back to the UK gives my backside a proper workout (camping each night, of course).

Apple, peach, cherry and pear trees in the garden, and three large veggie beds, keep me fed, and I make and swap marmalade and jams with my neighbour (only got one!) for any help that I might need.

I'm fortunate to have the use of a computer here in the UK, if only to see if I won the Lottery when last here. Nope.

A downside? perhaps the continuing absence of a rich widow, to pay for the wine?

Happy days.