What's the Carbon Footprint of Bicycling? 542
Hugh Pickens writes "Brian Palmer writes that although none of the major manufacturers has released data on their energy consumption and how much greenhouse gas making a bicycle requires, Shreya Dave, a graduate student at MIT, recently estimated that manufacturing an average bicycle results in the emission of approximately 530 pounds of greenhouse gases. Therefore, given a 'typical U.S. diet,' you would have to ride your bike instead of driving for around 400 miles to cover the bike's initial carbon footprint. However, calculating the total environmental impact of a mode of transit involves more than just the easy-to-measure metrics like mileage per gallon. Using a life-cycle assessment, Dave concluded that an ordinary sedan's carbon footprint is more than 10 times greater than a conventional bicycle's (PDF) on a mile-for-mile basis, assuming each survives 15 years and you ride the bike 2,000 miles per year. What about other ways to get to work? According to Dave's life-cycle analysis, the only vehicle that comes close to a bicycle is the peak-hour bus — and it's not really that close. A fully loaded bus is responsible for 2.6 times the carbon emissions total of a bicycle per passenger mile while off-peak buses account for more than 20 times as many greenhouse gases as a bicycle. What about the carbon footprint of walking? 'Walking is not zero emission because we need food energy to move ourselves from place to place,' says environmentalist Chris Goodall. 'Food production creates carbon emissions.'"
This manufacturer may have changed the numbers... (Score:5, Interesting)
By growing his bamboo bicycle frame into the shape he wants. Fairly cool!
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/09/growing-bamboo/ [wired.com]
Sounds pretty easy (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be surprised if there were many bicycle owners who didn't do 400 miles in one year, especially if they're using them for a daily commute. 2 miles each way every weekday will do that in 6 months. And bikes last for years. Mine used to belong to my father, who did 20 mile rides on it on a regular basis.
The 'instead of driving' thing makes this a bit more complex though. I don't have a car, so most of the time I use the bike the alternatives would be walking or getting a bus. The energy usage of the bike versus walking is difficult - going in to town I need to pedal about three times to coast there. Coming back, there's a gentle slope where it's about as much effort as walking, followed by a steep hill where the wheels aren't much help and I have to lift the mass of the bike as well as myself up the hill. If I bought a car, then I'd have to factor the cost of producing the car into the calculations.
Even if making a bicycle leaves a carbon footprint (Score:5, Interesting)
...it is still going to save the rider in gas money (provided they're riding the thing whenever they can, obviously a bike rotting in a garage does no one any good).
I see a lot of people screaming left and right about how all these technologies like mass transit and solar power and such are "just as bad", but the end result is always the assertion that "we should just do whatever because nothing we do will ever help so screw it". Here in Madison, WI, where there are a fair number of cyclists, there are still those people that go out of their way to prevent them from riding. Every article about a bike riding event warrants thousands of comments about how much these people wish they could go drive over the riders in their Canyonero and other such crap.
Every little bit helps, does it not? And why so much hostility for green energy initiatives? Are we just going to keep on burning oil and coal for power? I mean, clearly we need to start coming up with alternatives, right?
My habit (Score:3, Interesting)
you would have to ride your bike instead of driving for around 400 miles to cover the bike's initial carbon footprint.
And my 11 mile round trip to and from work? Already covered in two months of the first year.
Bikes also damage roads far less than cars do. A heavy bicycle weighs around 30 pounds
Slightly misleading, as it doesn't take into account the 170-pound rider on the bicycle. But I've read that the damage done to a road by a vehicle is somewhere between the third and fourth power of the weight per axle.
My current way of getting to and from work is a bicycle during good weather or an off-peak bus during rain and during late fall and winter. But the article says off-peak buses are horrid. Should I change it?
Re:Pure LOL (Score:5, Interesting)
Even worse, don't forget that it takes ten pounds of crude oil to deliver a pound of food to a plate, when everything is added together.
Look, you need to be careful when you use statistics from sources that don't spell out exactly how the figure is generated. A quick google http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_one_gallon_of_crude_oil_weigh [answers.com] search of how much oil weighs per gallon comes up with about 7 pounds per gallon for light sweet crude. Now, today's oil price for West Texas Intermediate is $85 per barrel http://www.oil-price.net/ [oil-price.net]. There are 42 gallons per barrel so the cost per pound is
42 gallons * 7 pounds per gallon = 294 pounds for a barrel
$85 / 294 pounds = .29 cents per pound
So according to your statement above, food requires 10 pounds of oil per pound of food, SO the average pound of food should cost at least $2.90 because that is how much it would take to cover just the cost of oil. It ignores cost of land, labor, equipment, seed, or processing and profit to farmer and retailer. Sorry, that doesn't sound right. Staples (corn, rice, wheat, potatoes) certainly don't cost that much per pound. Legumes don't. Most fresh fruit doesn't. Milk doesn't. Cheese will, but some cheeses on sale won't. Vegetable oil doesn't. Olive oil might. Most meat will cost at least that much. Maybe the figure you quoted was just referring to meat or processed foods.
In any case, before you use figures, just make sure that number makes sense. (I am reminded of the time in college when as a grader in a physics class, the students were asked to find how high a pressurized leak on a water tank would shoot into the air. Two student's answers had the water at escape velocity speeds, sending them into orbit the earth.)