Going green Rachel Atherton Red Bull’s dead ducks Halloweenthemed kit DH racer Phil Atwill Swarf Cycles Mark Wallace’s Canyon Sender Moto-inspired, hand-built Skippy MkII
Cycling is one of the greenest ways to travel, but can we say the same for mountain biking?
You’d have to have been living under a rock to have missed the climate change marches and Extinction Rebellion protests that have been going on all over the UK. Unless you’re Donald Trump, global warming is an unavoidable and worsening crisis. Just look at what happened to the UK’s two biggest bike festivals this year – both cancelled due to extreme weather. The thing is, joining a critical mass bike ride to show your solidarity can feel a bit hypocritical if the following day you’re boxing up your bike and jumping on a plane for a week
of chairlift-assisted downhilling or enduro shuttle runs in the Alps.
Now, we’re not saying that those annual trips to Morzine have to stop. Here at the mag, we still fly overseas to attend product launches and shoot features. But that doesn’t mean we can’t all be a little more mindful of our impact on the planet. We welcome it when pro riders raise awareness of green issues on social media, but raise an eyebrow when those posts are paired with adverts for their vehicle sponsors or followed by shots of them enjoying heli-drops.
The bike industry isn’t half as bad as some though. At least our sport is self-powered (for the most part) and, even when batteries do come into play, they often facilitate journeys that would otherwise have been made by car. The majority of brands at least claim to practise some level of sustainability as well, although this seems more heartfelt from some than others. Two examples are Pole, who say that they build their bikes from aluminium, at home in Finland, to avoid the pollution of Far East industry, and Trek, who’ve been recycling their old carbon frames in the USA since 2010. Sadly, similar services seem thin on the ground here in the UK. At least bikes tend to be sold on and reused rather than sent straight to landfill.
What can we do then? We can think about what we buy and do, and push brands to consider their carbon footprint and use more recycled materials and packaging. And not just bike brands – the food industry are some of the worst offenders, putting palm oil in everything, bananas in plastic wrappers, the list goes on... That’s a rant for a different time, but what we’re saying is, you shouldn’t have to rewrite your lifestyle to go greener, but it’d be good for the planet if all we tried to be a little conscientious, in both our bike life and everyday life.
WE’ RE NOT SAYING THAT THOSE ANNUAL TRIPS TOM OR Z IN E HAVE TO STOP, BUT WE CANAL LB EA LITTLE MORE MINDFUL OF OUR IMPACT ON THE PLANET