5 Environmental Initiatives in the Bike Industry: Trek Removes 433600lbs of Plastic, Sustainable Manufacturing, & More ...

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The cycling industry gets away with some pretty wasteful practices, which it often waves away under the pretense of "it's bikes, so it's green." The reality is that buying less, repairing and reusing your things, and riding more locally are the best things for the earth; however, we applaud the brands that are trying to reduce their impacts on the environment too. The perfect is the enemy of the good, so it's great to see people working towards better.

Let's take a look at the recent announcements that move the industry forward in reducing its impact on the environment.

Trek Drops 433,600 lbs of Plastic from Packaging

Trek has announced that it has found ways to remove 433,600 lbs of plastic packaging as it reviews the process of sending out its bikes.

We reported last year the first steps Trek had taken towards removing plastic, but it now appears that they have taken this a step further and dropped an incredible amount of plastic from its supply chain. Trek currently plans to remove all plastic from its packaging by 2024 and this is a huge milestone on its journey to that goal.

A breakdown of the plastic removed shows that the Marlin, Verve and other more entry-level adult bikes have seen the biggest amount of plastic removed with 246,000 lbs. Top-level bikes like the Supercaliber have seen a smaller reduction of 40,000 lbs, but this is more likely due to a potential lower volume of these bikes being sold than fewer reductions being made in the packaging.

• 246,000 lbs removed from Marlin, Verve, and other entry-level adult bikes
• 65,400 lbs removed from electric bikes: Rail, Powerfly, Allant, and Electra Townie Go!
• 58,000 lbs removed from kid’s bikes (including Kickster, Precaliber)
• 40,000 lbs removed from Madone, Supercaliber, and other high-level adult bikes
• 12,600 lbs removed from Electra Townie 7 and 9

Looking at its current packaging, Trek wanted to find the areas featuring the highest amounts of plastic and target these first by asking what purpose it served and whether it could be simply swapped for cardboard or paper. With this idea in mind, Trek could remove the down tube, top tube, seat tube and head tube foam, and plastic wrapping.

Trek does say that it was not always easy to remove plastic from its packaging, and in some areas, it was necessary to stick with a plastic option but one that can be reused or recycled. Examples of this include replacing plastic wrapping of smaller components with reusable Ziploc bags. While Trek is ahead of most of the industry in this area, the brand is still behind Cannondale, who has already created a full cardboard packaging system with zero plastic.

Pearl Izumi Starts 'Pedal to Zero' Initiative to Balance Out the Impact of Garments

Pearl Izumi is publishing the stats about the number of miles needed to ride a bike, instead of driving a car, to offset the carbon impact of each of its garments.

Every garment in Pearl Izumi's new BikeSyle Spring 2022 collection will feature the stats using the Higg Product Module to determine the amount of carbon dioxide created in the manufacturing of each garment. Using an estimate that a standard car will produce 404 grams of CO2 per mile, Pearl Izumi can then calculate how much a rider will need to use their bike to balance out the creation of their clothing.