Neil: Mountain biking as an activity is great for the environment.
As lovers of the outdoors, I'm sure most of us take it quite seriously.
Sometimes mountain bikers and the industry isn't quite as environmentally aware as you'd
like it to be.
Here are a few tips on how to be a more eco-friendly mountain biker.
[music] The first step is thinking about how much
you consume as a mountain biker.
Most obviously, your bikes, how often you buy new bikes?
There is a very good market for buying secondhand, I did a video just recently actually about
how to buy a cheap secondhand bike.
Definitely loads of resources around and ways of not consuming too much.
There's also a place, a workshop local to us in Bath in the UK, Julian House that actually
saves lots of bikes from landfills every year.
They handpick the bikes, refurbish them, and then sell them on.
Loads of great bikes for mountain biking, for commuting, for road riding that you can
do it without having to buy a new bike every single time.
[music] How else can you conserve and cut waste while
trying to keep old components to use them for spares, or I actually have kept my very
first mountain bike and I use it for my urban transport or my pup bike.
It's often much quicker in urban environments as well to actually ride around.
I know it is for me, takes me less than 10 minutes to commute on my bike, and it takes
probably 20 minutes in the car.
A more fun, better way of doing it plus, hopefully, it's going to keep you out of the car.
[music] I am aware that I'm getting very close to
being a hypocrite here because we do ride the latest and greatest kit here at GMBN,
but it's worth thinking about the types of bikes and components you're buying as well.
Materials like alloy or steel are much more repairable than carbon fiber, although you
can get carbon fiber frames repaired.
Try to reuse, repair things as and when you can.
[music] If you can avoid driving to the trails then
that's great, you can even get a few more miles in your legs to get there or at least
share the lift with friends is going to save an extra car going there.
Many of us love to fly abroad for riding holidays, which is great, but obviously trying to reduce
that is going to help or follow a great example led by professional dyno racer, Laurie Greenland,
who does do a lot of air miles to get to those races and he offsets them environmentally.
[music] Buying your kit local and actually riding
your bikes to the shops is brilliant.
It's a great way to support your local bike dealership as well.
Actually, buying online isn't a bad way of doing it because one courier van is driving
around dropping off multiple things, rather than everyone just driving into their local
shop.
[music] It's getting much easier to avoid using single-use
plastics as well.
Water bottles and packs of bladders are the way to go when it comes to riding.
Also, I actually keep a flask like this in my car, and to refill that with water so I
can top up my bottles on the go.
[music] You can also choose to spend your money with
eco-conscious brands, famously Patagonia, but also Howies are a British brand that make
eco-conscious clothing.
There's also that great old argument for buying cheap, buy twice.
If you spend money on cheap clothing components, whatever, sometimes they're unlikely to last
as long as actually stamping on the money and buying a quality piece of kit that will
last you much longer.
[music] What about ways of being a bit more eco friendly
in the garage?
Well, you can definitely think about the products you use.
Muc-Off actually removed all PTFEs from their products include that MO94, because they find
that PTFEs can cause serious harm to wildlife, so none of it in there.
Also, this stuff is biodegradable.
Also, Muc-Off commissioned a CO2 report into their tuber sealant, I find that it's actually
carbon positive.
That just means that basically there's a greater environmental impact of making that tubeless
sealant than there is of not.
The report said that if 1 million tires use Muc-Off sealant per year, the actual saving
would be 0.4 million kilograms of CO2 per year.
Pretty crazy, really.
Also, things like bike cleaners, so this Muc-off bike cleaner is biodegradable.
This is the eco-refill, so 75% less packaging.
Also, you can go to participate in bike shops and get this thing refilled, so save you from
buying another plastic bottle.
Getting rid of your inner tubes is carbon-positive.
You can recycle these things.
You just don't need them.
You can use this thing for all sorts of things as well like wrapping your chainstay, I've
even seen innertubes used for mountain bikes on the bike rafts, use them as a bungee.
[music] There's a couple more organizations that are
doing some great work.
Trashfreetrails is a mountain bike led organization.
They're really trying to encourage people to clear up their trails and wild places and
reduce plastic pollution.
One Percent for the Planet who are a global environmental movement who have business and
individual partners who help support environmental issues around the world.
Patagonia are a business member who give one percent of their annual sales, as are Muc-off
who give 1% of their nano bike wash sales.
There you go.
There's just a few fairly easy ways, I think, of just being a bit more environmental friendly
as a mountain biker.
Definitely let me know in the comments down below if there any others I've missed or are
there any others you can think of.
Hopefully, that's inspired all of us to just try a little bit better.
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