production / ethics

There was this in the Guardian recently on carbon cost of bike industry: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2021/sep/23/why-arent-more-big-bike-firms-tracking-their-environmental-impact

Trek compared the aluminium and carbon-fibre versions of its bikes and consistently found that making the latter produces nearly three times the emissions. The same goes for wheels.

The report also shows that each technological “advancement” that is added to a bike – carbon wheels, electronic shifting, the addition of a motor – comes with an environmental cost. This culminates in a £10,000 electric mountain bike with a 320kg manufacturing carbon footprint.

…From this perspective, the bicycle industry doesn’t look that different. It is built around a yearly production cycle, with “new” models often amounting to little more than a different colour of paint. It uses a strategy of forced obsolescence; standards are routinely updated, making it hard to find replacement parts for older bikes. A model that was, of course, perfected by the car industry.