Can we make bicycles sustainable again?

[francovendee]

PS wrt the original post, I have just manufactured another machine (a 69er) totally from spare parts salvaged from dead bikes

I too have done this recently and have gone from owning one bike to four.
I bought a Giant MTB on Le Bon Coin for 15€ (actually two bikes, one a BSO). The plan was to motorise the Giant but it didn't work out.
The Giant has been made into a tourer, using parts that were used and in my spares stash. The Giant will be handed on to a friend as a gift. The bike frame was in very good condition and dates from 1996. I've surprised myself as although a mix of parts it's a very nice ride.
In the meantime I've bought a new ebike.
I've still got the BSO and this will end up at the tip.

[Cugel]

"the bicycle is becoming increasingly damaging to the environment"

What will they come up with next.

It's always assumed that if you're a cyclist you're "doing your bit for the environment" but I reckon that applies to a tiny minority of cyclists. How many cyclists do you know that only took up cycling or, they only carry on doing it, because they think it's helping the environment?

For a start, I drive a car and use a bicycle. Then there's all the people that are trying to get fitter, that's it, they are just trying to get fitter and want to see some scenery while they are at it. Then there's the more serious crowd that are amateur or pro racers... are they doing it to help the environment? Of course not.

So who is cycling just because it helps the environment? Anyone? It's just another stupid political football that's being kicked around. It's not everyday people that can help save the environment, it's big companies dumping millions of tons of toxic junk into rivers and oceans, it's big companies cutting down trees. They can help, by packing it in. Finding other ways of doing whatever they do, without polluting and taking away so many trees.

Anyone that thinks they are helping to save the planet by cycling, I don't even know what to say.

My bike is made up from... a frame that was used and I know (with proof) did thousands and thousands of miles before I bought it used. Almost every part on it, was also bought used. Have I done my bit? I literally can't care. What I do know is, I have got very good equipment on my bike, a really good frame and it didn't cost me anything like what a new bike would have cost - that doesn't even exist anyway. If I did buy a new bike it would just become "triggers broom" where I'd be selling off parts and replacing them, probably to the point that almost nothing is left of the original bike.

You're probably right that the motivations of individual consumers to buy & use stuff that's less ecologically damaging are primarily to do with desires and intents that have only a small portion of "contribute to less pollution & damage".

Personally I'm motivated to buy long-lasting things infrequently to get far better value and utility, with the lower consumption-pollution rate a pleasant side effect. A purchase of solar panels & batteries, an e-car and so forth is primarily motivated by saving money long term and being immune to the effects of rabid capitalism within the energy supply domain, as well as to bad weather events that knock out the grid for days. The lesser pollution is an added benefit.

This illustrates that consumers, even the most avid, can be persuaded to be "greener" if the organisations manufacturing and marketing the consumables provide not just greener stuff but greener stuff that's better, less expensive and has various additional benefits compared to the planned-obsolescence junk a lot of manufacturers and retailers are still happy to sell. The problem is that consumers are constantly duped by lying adverts and the vast PR organisation devoted to servicing the manufacturers and retailers who are only interested in increasing turnover (via the fashion cycle, adverts and planned obsolescence) to increase profits.

In a sane world, governments would make illegal most of the current manufacturing and marketing practices that use adverts et al to make and sell polluting and otherwise damaging junk. But we are governed by sock puppets owned and operated by Stupid-Greedybarstids-R-Us.

***************
How hard would it be to move from manufacturing and marketing practices causing vast waste and pollution to practices that recycled everything, made only high quality goods and stopped feedstock extraction processes that are highly damaging/exploitative in favour of far better and sustainable methods? One suspects it would only be difficult for those who don't want to lose their vast current profits from pursuing their usual damaging practices, which minimise overheads by handing off the high costs of pollution & damage elsewhere and maximise returns by selling junk that lasts for five minutes.

The world needs to be taken away from the infantile monsters who currently own it. In fact, the dominant notion of human ownership itself needs to be scrapped in favour of arrangements that used to be called The Common Weal, before aristocracies and kleptocrats stole everything using Enclosure Acts and other tools of corrupt and partisan legalisations of theft by the powerful.

Cugel, having scarlet red thoughts along with a few green ones.

[Carlton green]

An excellent post yesterday by Cycle Tramp, thank you. I do slightly question one point, or rather see how consumers are misused.

Yes there are big companies clear cutting forests, and poisoning the land and sea and air. However they're not doing it for fun. They're doing it because of consumer choice - that is to say the companies behave this way because we buy products from them, and by doing so support their behaviour.

That is true, or rather it is true on one level and not quite so on another. Let’s give an example with the Tobacco industry which thrives by persuading us, in a wider variety of ways, to buy their product. Bookmakers are similar in that they find ways to appeal to greed and hook customers into long term use. Companies, most all of them, persuade us to buy their products and products that we otherwise wouldn’t really want or need.

How much power do we really need? Well, I answered that earlier (above) and think it still valid.

Not all that much, and even less in a lighter vehicle.
But most cars seem to target somewhere about 7-8 seconds to 60 - I don't really mind how much power is available from 30-70, accelerate as hard as you like there, but at low speeds you're often in town and don't need to do a racing start - over 70 simply isn't needed.

That 0 - 60 mph acceleration ‘target’ is half and maybe even one third of what it used to be yet we are pursued, one way or another, that we need fast cars when most of us just need a box on wheels to get us from A to B. SUV’s are a whole other case in which the consumer has been up-sold and then up-sold some more! Gosh, a nearby farmer sold his ancient Land Rover - not even an SUV - because he didn’t really need four wheel drive and he’s now got an old Focus; his Focus seems to manage his long and well rutted drive perfectly well plus any snow and ice we have. SUV’s, well they must be amongst the biggest waste of money ever for most folk. If you need to go off of road then think about what (converted) rally cars can do and about how fragile your car’s bodywork is …

The customer does hold power, but too often it’s the power to be persuaded to buy something that they really don’t need.

The problem is that consumers are constantly duped by lying adverts and the vast PR organisation devoted to servicing the manufacturers and retailers who are only interested in increasing turnover (via the fashion cycle, adverts and planned obsolescence) to increase profits.

^^ Quite.

[Biospace]

The customer does hold power, but too often it’s the power to be persuaded to buy something that they really don’t need.

I see governments planning all sorts of highly complex authoritarian controls in order to try and reduce human harm to the planet and its life, which in many is already prompting many to react in the other direction. Long term change works far better if from ground up than top down, better understanding of what is happening and some famous/fashionable people taking a lead would be a start.

Yesterday I learned the BBC is sacking the BBC Singers (one of Europe's most highly regarded choirs) while keeping Lineker on the payroll, whose massive salary would more than cover the whole choir. I also learned it has withdrawn (to remain online only) one of Attenborough's latest programmes because it may have caused offence to various sections of society. Its topic? - the enormous destruction of British wildlife as a result of our land use.

Personally I'm motivated to buy long-lasting things infrequently to get far better value and utility, with the lower consumption-pollution rate a pleasant side effect.

***************
How hard would it be to move from manufacturing and marketing practices causing vast waste and pollution to practices that recycled everything, made only high quality goods and stopped feedstock extraction processes that are highly damaging/exploitative in favour of far better and sustainable methods? One suspects it would only be difficult for those who don't want to lose their vast current profits from pursuing their usual damaging practices, which minimise overheads by handing off the high costs of pollution & damage elsewhere and maximise returns by selling junk that lasts for five minutes.

This is my approach. The family car has covered hundreds of thousands of miles, is a quarter of a century old (though looks a quarter of that) and is totally reliable, we seek out furniture which is at least 100 years old. I don't miss having 50 or more computers running the car, or the off-gassing of various carcinogens from plastics and flame retardants. All our bicycles have been bought once sorted by a previous owner, most are over a decade old.

[Bmblbzzz]

An excellent post yesterday by Cycle Tramp, thank you. I do slightly question one point, or rather see how consumers are misused.

Yes there are big companies clear cutting forests, and poisoning the land and sea and air. However they're not doing it for fun. They're doing it because of consumer choice - that is to say the companies behave this way because we buy products from them, and by doing so support their behaviour.

That is true, or rather it is true on one level and not quite so on another. Let’s give an example with the Tobacco industry which thrives by persuading us, in a wider variety of ways, to buy their product. Bookmakers are similar in that they find ways to appeal to greed and hook customers into long term use. Companies, most all of them, persuade us to buy their products and products that we otherwise wouldn’t really want or need.

Yes, it is our individual actions which provide the demand for eg beef from clearcut rainforest, or a nice mahogany table, but our individual actions are themselves informed by those corporate actions. The "arrow of causality" is in fact a circle. Perhaps if we take away one part the circle will fall?

[mattheus]

Anyone that thinks they are helping to save the planet by cycling, I don't even know what to say.

OK, thanks for that interesting post. Bye now!

[Cugel]

The customer does hold power, but too often it’s the power to be persuaded to buy something that they really don’t need.

Being highly amenable to persuasion isn't a power but a vulnerability. An associated power is being amenable to reason, inclusive of the employment of a healthy & gimlet-eyed scepticism. One may then still be persuaded .... but not so easily; and not by lies, glamour and appeals to the nastier parts of our subconscious.

Little or no sustainability in our lifestyles relies on our vulnerability to specious persuasions, often appealing to various other human vulnerabilities such as our lust for pleasure and status. Perhaps a primary need at the individual level is to apply far more introspection and honesty about ourselves? No easy thing for any human to do. I've failed at it for, oh, years and years!

Cugel, making sure the ad-blocker is going full-whack.

[Cugel]

I see governments planning all sorts of highly complex authoritarian controls in order to try and reduce human harm to the planet and its life, which in many is already prompting many to react in the other direction. Long term change works far better if from ground up than top down, better understanding of what is happening and some famous/fashionable people taking a lead would be a start.

You here allude to another large and pervasive issue with modern societies with their vast hierarchies and fragmentation into a faux individualism that is nothing more than he atomisation of societies into nothing other than divisions of labour (including into the non-labouring and therefore neglected category). A major effect of us all being constructed and used as nothing more than tiny cogs in a vast and complex socio-economic machine is that very few of us have any chance of leading a more authentic life - one in which we construct ourselves within a social and economic framework also constructed, owned and understood by those within in it rather then by those on high.

Most of us are now constructs of mass media notions and instructions composed by tiny and entirely self-interested elites. Only members of the elites have any semblance of understanding and control of "how the world works" (and even that's a poor one) with most of us cogs knowing only how to be a cog. Should a cog get too great a glimpse of the vast machine churning up their lives, that cog is easily distracted and put back to coggery by the various elite-operated controls of the political and media sheep dogs.

The advent of large scale political and media control of populations is a relatively recent thing in human history. Even today, historians, anthropologists and others of their ilk come up with views, through the dark glass of our academic institutions (what's left of them) showing once very different human lifestyles, which may have lacked the sophistication, glamour and the apparent ease of modern life but which were at least lives owned and constructed by those living them, via a much better understanding, manufacture and use of the things involved.

But then the various religious institutions and the nation-building aristocracies began to own us all.

These days, most modern folk "struggle to change a lightbulb". We "need an app for that" (i.e. for everything). In fact, we need mysterious black boxes to make every aspect of our lives function, from transport (bicycles and cars) to understanding "out there" (the mass media) and everything in between. Less and less of us have any skills enabling us to construct, understand and control our own lives. We have to "just buy it".

Yet it is possible to resist. One can acquire various making, understanding and using skills that at least allow some black boxes to be opened and fixed - changed, even. But making our own "boxes of tricks"? It's now very hard indeed to do that; impossible without at the same time having to acquire and use a large range of other black box goods & services we'll never open or understand.

Cugel, off to the workshop in a minute.

[[XAP]Bob]

The family car has covered hundreds of thousands of miles

So the fuel it has burnt (ignoring any other consumables) could have been used (in carbon terms) to build (and drive) several EVs the same distance.

Whilst I agree that we should keep things running - there is a point at which keeping things running isn't actually good, because their operational costs exceed the costs of making something new.

A completely different example is fridges and freezers... their efficiency has increased so much since the 1970s (2MWh/year) to the 1990s (750kWh/year), 2000s (500kWh/year), to now (250kWh/year).
That's ~10% of the energy requirements for fridges with more storage, so at some point it's better to replace an old fridge freezer than it is to continue using it.

Matt Parker and Bec Hill deal with the economics here:
https://aproblemsquared.libsyn.com/sizi ... ing-organs (28 minutes in)

But you can make the same arguments looking at carbon rather than money.


Talking about using old technology... I have just wired up a (pre owned) storage heater in my office.
So that's been charging up overnight, and is now trickling heat into my office... somewhat perverse incentive, but cheap overnight electrons means that it's (~35%) cheaper than burning gas, despite "only" being 100% efficient.
I'll monitor the energy usage (I measure how much energy the heater uses, and have been monitoring my gas usage as a function of external temperature for several months) to see what the energy (and cost) balance is - I'm happy with the heat it's giving at the moment though, it's a little closer to me than the radiator, which is nice.

You could allocate all it's usage to a gas peaker, or you could allocate it the grid mix of carbon intensity, and given the wind this morning... the grid was at ~60g/kWh (compared with about 450g/kWh for a gas plant).

[rareposter]

Whilst I agree that we should keep things running - there is a point at which keeping things running isn't actually good, because their operational costs exceed the costs of making something new.

Well at some point most companies simply stop supporting that model (this applies to pretty much any mechanical or electrical "thing") as it's no longer economical to keep making parts for it on the assumption that the few people still using [thing] will occasionally buy one. Its very cost and labour intensive to be making and storing parts for obsolete kit when you know that of the few people still using [thing], if/when it break, they'll simply buy a new [thing] because it's cheaper than trying to source a part and then find someone with the expertise to fit said part to the old [thing].

And at some point you find that the old stuff you're trying to source is more expensive and less good than just buying a new thing. I guess that's technology for you!

[[XAP]Bob]

You don't even need to invoke repair bills... just looking at the cost (financial or carbon) of the consumables.

Of course there is a third option - drop the engine out and replace it with an electric drive train. And that's entirely possible, although financially - you need to like to old vehicle for some reason.

[axel_knutt]

How hard would it be to move from manufacturing and marketing practices causing vast waste and pollution to practices that recycled everything, made only high quality goods and stopped feedstock extraction processes that are highly damaging/exploitative in favour of far better and sustainable methods?

Extremely difficult, that's why it never happens.

Marketing works because it tells people what they want to hear, and sells them what they want to buy. Yes companies could put their prices up and spend the money cleaning up the environment, but they'll just go out of business when all their customers switch to whichever competitors carry on with business as usual and undercut them. Politicians could break this bind by legislating to create a level playing field that everyone has to abide by, except that they're in exactly the same position: any party that introduces unpopular policies will get voted out in favour of a party that doesn't.

People compete with one another to consume more than their peers, and more than they need, because that's the way society measures status. People don't want second hand recycled products, because there's no status in having a ten year old car, or last years phone, or a recycled TV, that's why environmental measures are always a good idea for other people. The neighbours should have a settee of freecycle but not me. Traffic jams are caused by the car in front. Motorists should travel less but not cyclists. Supermarkets should cut out food waste but not consumers.

Find another way for people to earn status, and you'll have found the solution to climate change.

[Biospace]

Its very cost and labour intensive to be making and storing parts for obsolete kit when you know that of the few people still using [thing], if/when it break, they'll simply buy a new [thing] because it's cheaper than trying to source a part and then find someone with the expertise to fit said part to the old [thing].

And at some point you find that the old stuff you're trying to source is more expensive and less good than just buying a new thing. I guess that's technology for you!

Manufacturers understand how damaging it is to their business to not only have products which last reliably for decades and prematurely ending the life of a well-evolved product (ie not one for which the development curve is nearly horizontal) because of built-in obsolescence or failure to be able to source a replacement part is extraordinarily damaging to the environment, but essential to their continued existance as things are.

Humans have been conditioned by marketing pressures to expect new shiny things, many believing sales nonsense that an old model is now of little use or performs poorly, some indulge their vanity and perceived status or simply use their possessions as a form of one-upmanship in society (which outside of their own little social circles can often not work as intended), others are bored in life and enjoy a steady trickle of new acquisitions.

In a society which valued longevity and sustainability, factories would be making replacement parts and upgrades rather than scratching their heads as to how to redesign yet again some product in order to boost sales.

For me, there's a higher quality of life to be enjoyed through buying the best you can afford, or saving up for it whether it's 200 years old, 10yo or freshly made. Rather than using something second-rate which slowly deteriorates, there is immense pleasure enjoying and maintaining something which continues to deliver first rate performance.

People don't want second hand recycled products

Yet a new car is made from recycled steel, aluminium, copper and plastics. It's just that we ship the discarded waste half way around the world, to be turned into a 'new' car in the locality, or sold to Western companies to make into one, with various components sourced from around the world.

[al_yrpal]

Went in a proper carpet shop this morning and was chatting to the highly experienced sales bloke whilst looking at a sea of grey with barely any other colours visible. When asked about current public colour preferences his single word reply was "sheep!"

Whole industries are based on fashion the enemy of sustainability. Applies to bikes too...

Al

[Biospace]

The family car has covered hundreds of thousands of miles

So the fuel it has burnt (ignoring any other consumables) could have been used (in carbon terms) to build (and drive) several EVs the same distance.

When the energy used for recharging the traction battery isn't from a grid whose spare capacity is almost always from burning fossil fuel, then the case for battery EVs is much more reasonable. In Sweden and Norway for example, they make sense.

There's a 'holier than thou' aspect of a few using EVs which can lead to exaggerated and false claims, which many are concerned further stoke false public perceptions that they create little harm and so will be used with no concern for the planet, no matter how heavy and how powerful they are.

All the trends are for all EVs to be heavier and more powerful, when we could so easily be going in a positive direction. Even a Nissan Leaf has from 147bhp to 215bhp power and 320Nm of torque, all of which is available from zero revs. This is more than many a 70s Lamborghini, the original fast Golf GTi had just 109bhp and 140Nm.

In another post, you miss out that the ICEv is a power station as well energy store and traction provider. This hugely exaggerates the real world BEV efficiency in ignoring the ~55% efficient Grid power stations. There are also battery charging losses, typically 10%-15%. Sure, today has been very windy and it's likely that there has been excess capacity, but most of the time all our excess capacity - which is what you tap into when increasing the demand from the Grid - comes from burning fossil fuel.

Like any other car, truck, coach, aircraft, train, gas boiler, fire or any product which runs from power from the UK electricity grid, our family car has consumed fossil fuels. With EVs are we not doing what we've always done with pollution, creating a little less with a new technology, sending it further out of sight and promising that there is the potential, eventually, for it not to harm anyone or anything?