Towards a more sustainable bicycle journey

Last summer, I decided to take on a personal challenge. Cycle the 70 miles between London and Brighton. I went through tremendous self-doubt - often wondering what I had got myself into. I trained for three months and did some meticulous planning. And suddenly it was the day. On a crisp London morning, I said bye to my family and close friends and as they cheered me, began the 7 hour ride to Brighton. I have never been so happy to see the sea! It was a tough ride, but ultimately felt truly rewarding.

As I was preparing for this event, I quickly realised that long distance cycling can be complicated while requiring a lot preparation. One thing that bothered me involved buying many accessories for the trip which are full of plastic (Lycra clothing, lightweight plastic water-bottles, a sturdy helmet, cycling cleats… even the protein bar packaging). I had decided to cycle to create a more sustainable lifestyle. Buying all these plastic essentials made me question whether I was actually on a sustainable cycling lifestyle

A Bicycle is one of the oldest and simplest forms of transport, It is great for our mind, body and for the environment. However, the cycling industry is increasingly damaging the environment. It has a formidable carbon footprint owing to aluminium bike frames and nowadays carbon fibre, a wonder composite material required to make high performance bicycles. The production of such bicycles consumes huge quantities of water and energy and generates lots of waste.

According to the UCI (the world governing body of cycling sport) in 2021 the sports industry was the third largest user of carbon fibre worldwide. Most sports equipment using this material has an average lifespan of three years and 90% ends up in landfills.

I wondered if there could be a viable solution to this problem. To make cycling even better for the environment. To make it a fantastically sustainable way of transport.

The answer turned out wilder than you could ever imagine.

Grass.

Well, not grass as you know it. But a special type of grass that we have all heard of, and we all know about… only not so much in the context of a sustainable lifestyle.

Did you know that Bamboo is a type of grass?

Bamboo is a nature-based carbon fibre which belongs to the grass family of plants. It grows faster than any other plant on the planet with some species growing up to 1 meter a day! Bamboo has super carbon sequestration capabilities. Bamboo is a renewable and regenerative resource, one which can be harvested every year and will continue to sequester carbon year after year. There are more than 1600 known species of bamboo which largely grow in tropical and subtropical to mild temperate regions globally.

The tensile strength of bamboo is higher than that of steel, it has amazing vibration dampening capabilities and is light weight. This makes it ideal for construction industries which use engineered bamboo which lasts for decades with proper care. No wonder it’s been nicknamed Green Gold.

Last year, after completing my 70-mile bicycle ride on my 'Specialized' aluminium bike, I decided to build my own Bamboo Bicycle at a workshop here in London. The bicycle frame is made of MOSO Bamboo sourced from China. I enjoyed building this bike over four days as I reconnected with my engineering basics. Cutting and filing the bamboo poles to the right dimensions, preparing the flax & natural epoxy resin base to join the bamboo poles and build out a sturdy and lightweight bike frame was pure joy.

Assembling all the parts and crafting the bamboo bike gave me a great sense of achievement. My wife named it Bambi.

I have since ridden Bambi from Oxford to London (appx 70 miles) on a cold and wet day in March this year. This ride was treacherous as it had rained heavily the previous day and I was riding through the countryside on muddy and slushy cycling paths. It took me more than ten hours to complete this journey and by the time I reached home I had injured my hamstring and my arms were stiff and painful trying to balance the handlebar through the slippery, wet journey.

While I regularly use it for local commutes and rides, I am now considering my next big ride. From London to Amsterdam next summer, and my family is beginning to consider me a little bit insane.

Here is my simple attempt to calculate the Carbon Footprint of ‘Bambi’.

This is not a scientific calculation based on Lifecycle Analysis, instead a simple exercise in trying to understand how much CO2 is being saved by using Bamboo instead of carbon fibre.

^{Carbon Footprint comparison of Bamboo and Carbon Fibre Bikes}

According to this article, How much CO2 is captured by bamboo? (moso-bamboo.com), the carbon stored in Bamboo is much higher than other bio-based materials including most wood species. The same article suggests that the ‘Construction Stored Carbon’ can be as high as 1.662 tons of CO2 per cubic meter of Bamboo. For the purposes of my Bamboo Bike frame, which is made of 0.002 cubic meter of MOSO Bamboo, I arrive at a sequestered carbon of 0.0033 tons. This converts to 3.3Kg of NEGATIVE CO2 footprint of my Bicycle frame.

And according to Trek (one of the leading Bicycle companies in the world) the carbon foot-print of one of its high-performance carbon fibre models (the Madone) is 192Kg of CO2e. The carbon fibre frame for this Model has an embodied carbon footprint of 29% which is about 56Kg CO2e.  Refer Treks sustainability  report here - Trek Bicycle - 2023 Sustainability_ReportEdition_EU_EN-GB - Page 17 (publitas.com)

Wow! I was thrilled to realise that the carbon footprint of my Bamboo Bike frame is NEGATIVE 3.3Kg CO2e compared to that of the Carbon Fibre frame of Madone which is POSITIVE 56Kg CO2e. An average vehicle in the US produces 0.4Kg of CO2e per mile journey.

The embodied carbon in the bicycle frame can also be offset over time, by regular bicycle rides which substitute our emission filled fossil fuel powered journeys. If we ride our bikes for regular commuting and everyday errands, we could gradually offset the embodied carbon footprint of our bike. Again Trek, a leading US based bicycle manufacturing company estimates that you need to replace 430 driving miles with 430 riding miles to offset the carbon cost of your new bike. Refer Rule of 430 here - Rule of 430 (trekbikes.com). When I do a similar calculation for my Bamboo Bike , I need to replace 330 driving miles with an equivalent number of riding miles to offset the carbon cost of all the parts of my bike (other than the Bamboo frame) which are made of regular metal and plastic components.

However, if I can build-in more bamboo based parts in my bicycle, for e.g., the handlebar, the front fork and so on, I can start moving towards a completely Carbon Neutral Bike sooner than the 330miles.

Personally making a Bamboo Bike is definitely rewarding. However, it is extremely labour intensive and time consuming. Given that the performance of a Bamboo Bike is almost the same as any commercial high-end bike, it is worth-while for Trek and other bike manufacturers to consider bamboo as a sustainable low cost material with very good performance.

What else can be done to continue on this path of a truly sustainable cycling journey?

Astonishingly, bamboo can be converted to viscose to make apparel and clothing. When Bamboo cellulose is processed in certain responsible and eco-friendly ways, we can produce low carbon bamboo fabric. This fabric is high-wicking, anti-microbial, and makes amazingly comfortable clothing. And bamboo pulp can also be responsibly converted into paper and packaging material and as a potential substitute for many forms of plastic.

I have now introduced bamboo based apparel and even shoes for my Bike rides. I am also doing some research on a Bamboo Helmet. As I introduce more bamboo in my entire cycling context, I believe I move closer and closer to a carbon neutral journey.

Who is commercially leveraging Bamboo?

Bamboo is a wonder-material which is regenerative. There are proven ways to produce Engineered Bamboo with a negative carbon footprint and it is slowly and gradually entering the Construction Industry. The Industrial sector can also benefit from this and there are some early examples of this. Specific Models of Toyota have leveraged bamboo for the interiors and the steering wheel. The Sports industry could take the lead and design specific components and parts to reduce the overall product carbon footprint. Bambooskateboards.com could provide some inspiration.

Bamboo has immense potential to help us move towards a more sustainable world, bringing huge environmental benefits and employment opportunities. In bamboo, we have a nature-based solution which is abundantly available, highly functional, versatile and resilient, and one which should be well researched and exploited by multiple industries.

This article is also published on the author's blog. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.