Rouleur #114

The Sustainability Issue

We like to think that cycling is among the greenest and most sustainable things we can do. Getting around by bike is cleaner, greener, cheaper, faster, healthier, more pleasant, more fun, quieter, more considerate and mostly easier than motorised transport.

However, as an industry and as a sport, we have a long, long way to go. Like any commercial enterprise, cycling relies on riders buying bikes and their constituent parts or clothes. There’s an environmental cost to manufacturing and transporting cycling gear. As for professional cycling, the sport moves vehicles, infrastructure and a lot of people from country to country and continent to continent, and its carbon footprint is huge.

This edition of Rouleur is based around the idea of sustainability. We look at the problems cycling faces, but also at the solutions that some creative, innovative and far-sighted people are coming up with. But we also ask how riders, teams and race followers sustain their own lives in cycling.

Cycling is as close to a silver bullet for many of the ills of modern life as you could find and it’s important to promote it, advocate for it and educate people about its benefits. As long as we face up to the challenges posed by the environmental cost the activity and sport still have, cycling can contribute to saving the world.