E-bike sales are booming. They’re set to boom even more as state and local governments, and even the federal government, begin initiating subsidies for the purchase of e-bikes, in a bid to get more cars off the roads. They’re also booming on trails as riders of all skill and fitness levels try them, then immediately realize the benefits of pedal assist.
So, they’re here to stay and there will be a whole lot more of them in the near future. That also means a whole lot more of their batteries, which are toxic and require a lot of environmental nastiness to produce. Making more of them isn’t ideal, even if riding an e-bike is, when compared with a car.
To deal with that, the bike advocacy group People for Bikes is leading a movement to get those batteries recycled. Bike brands will be paying into a fund that covers the cost of consumer battery recycling. You buy an e-bike and, depending on where you bought it, years later when the battery is exhausted, you turn it in for recycling.
A non-profit that’s already experts at battery recycling, Call2Recycle, will manage the logistics of setting up drop boxes for batteries at retailers, or, in the case of a direct-to-consumer bike purchase, of sending kits to people to send their batteries back in. The exhausted batteries will have their components broken down to be re-used in new products.
We thank the below brands for jumping on board this smart project.
What about Antigravity? I don’t have an electromechanical bike (yet) but I use their LiFePO4 batteries to run the avionics on my current mechanical mountain bike fleet. I ran sealled lead-acid batteries for ages until earlier this year when I finally ditched them.
Do they, or will they have anything to do with Antigravity since their products (lithium SLA/AGM replacements) are traditionally considered “motorcycle” batteries? Sure would be nice to have something better than trekking 25 miles across the county to the local household hazardous waste facility to be rid of my spent batteries.
Just pedal a real bike.
What an odd remark. Would you like to elaborate on that point?
Just pedal a real bike. You win and the environment wins. Quit trying to be such a trendy consumer.
This is not a great take, at all. E-cargo bikes are poised to replace cars in many people’s lives. It has nothing to do with being a trendy consumer.
So many stories are just talking about negative things these days. This is such a good solution.
Pinkbike did have an article the other week, and their figures said the carbon footprint of a e-bike is equivalent to the carbon footprint of driving an average American car 560 miles I think. So if you get an e-cargo or e-bike for around town, and save more than 560 miles of driving your car, then you’re ahead from there. These people that put 10,000 or 15,000 miles on their e-bikes rather than a car, and saving serious footprint.
I don’t own an ebike, and I enjoy riding uphill so odds are I won’t be buying one in the future. However, improving their sustainability is an absolute win. Ebikes are demonstrably more efficient and less polluting than cars, like Justin and Kris point out this has the potential to substantially reduce auto-based emissions. I personally don’t see ebikes replacing cars in American suburbs or rural hinterlands, but even adoption in large cities and small towns is something to be excited about.
The exploding popularity of ebikes where I live (northern UT) indicates that they’re here to stay. This comes with it’s own host of problems, but most of them seem to boil down to two criticisms; (1) more ebikes means more traffic which means faster trail degradation, and (2) personal frustration that someone can ride uphill faster and with less effort than you by paying money. Problem (1) can be addressed through increasing funding for public lands management and volunteer work so we can better maintain existing trail and build new trail to address increasing crowds. The second requires an ego check, and acknowledgement that technology has always broken down barriers in outdoor recreation. We have more people wanting to recreate on wild lands, and that means there will be less space for each of us. We need to get past the frustrations surrounding outdoor recreation becoming more popular and accessible so we can redirect our effort to designating more public land and better protecting the lands we already have access to.