Green Everest: B&M
Everesting has become quite the fashion over the last year or so, mainly due to the lack of events and the simplicity of the challenge, but Ronan McLaughlin just raised the bar. He set a new world record climbing 8849m in 6hrs 40mins and 54 seconds, which for those unsure, is bonkers fast.
Alongside being a weapon going uphill, Ronan is a technical writer for Cycling Tips, a road bike website, and he recently wrote this article about changing the model of bike sales that got my cogs turning.
Unfortunately, as much as we all kid ourselves otherwise, cycling is not a very green sport. The pure act of turning pedals is, but all the other stuff, whether that is carbon frames, corrosive brake fluid or snazzy riding kit is not doing the environment any favours.Â
Of course, how we deal with this is way too big of a question for B&M to even start to deal with, but I think the easiest way for us to reduce our impact is to buy less and to buy second hand where we can. This is where Ronan’s article comes in. By having bike dealers act as a middle man (like a car dealer) for second hand bike sales, there would be better quality second hand bikes for us to buy and less waste from the industry in total.Â
Of course, the current sales model is driven by the market, and it’s evident that at the moment this model is what people want, but at some point we may have to address the elephant in the room and this strikes me as a good place to start.
HG
