Bike Project: Earth Day Limited Edition – Part II

Here’s a follow up to the Seven Cycles Earth Day post from a few days ago—part one is here.  I mentioned I would explain some of the internal business processes and manufacturing thinking that we employed on this Viridianesque project, and how it’s affected my thinking about frame building in general.

I’ll preface the details by clarifying that this information isn’t meant to be a “how to” series of posts.  I’m not suggesting that this is the way to build ecologically low impact bikes, or that what Seven is doing on this project is the right way, or the best way.  I’m simply sharing how we went about it—as a number of people have asked for details. 

Minimizing Seven’s Ecological Footprint

For this project we evaluated more than just carbon emissions—a popular topic right now.  I have a lot to learn about designing and building low impact products, but I’ve been involved in enough sustainability projects to know that reducing carbon emissions is only a piece of the puzzle.  So, we made an effort to view the entire process of bike building from cradle-to-cradle—with an emphasis on the steps over which we have the most control.

As I partially mentioned in the first post, we looked at ways to diminish ecoimpact through:

• Extending the entire bike’s service life and overall durability
• Conserving materials use
• Minimizing consumables use
• Employing biodegradable materials and consumables
• Recycling and reusing support materials 

Within this framework, we had a number of internal and external goals for the bike; here I’ll explain one of the primary internal goals:

Goal:  Offset the fuel consumption equivalent of commuting by car for one year

It seems fairly certain that the biggest carbon emissions reduction we could achieve in frame building is the actual commute to and from work.  So, we focused on this first and most diligently. 

We began with setting a goal of offsetting one-year of fuel from car commuting for every Earth Day bike we built.  In other words, for each Earth Day bike we sell, we’ve committed to commuting, by bicycle, the equivalent miles that would have been driven by the average US commuter in a year.  A quick calculation of the typical US commute results in about 7,000 miles per year—about 350 gallons of fuel.

The most effective—and easiest—way for Seven to track the offset is to track our bike commuting miles.  To make gauging this as easy as possible, we decided that only those that commute to work more than 80% of the time would work on the Earth Day Bikes.  To clarify, this is 80% of the time, at a minimum, while working on the Earth Day customer bikes.  This was actually quite simple because so many Seven employees commute to work more than 80% of the time—many commute by bike 100% of the time.

We also decided on this idea because we felt it would resonate with the riders that would be investing in this bike and its mission.  We had mixed feelings about this decision because it could be seen as a bit exclusionary—not everyone at Seven commutes to work every day:  me, for example.  However, in the end, we obviously decided to do this.

So, while each bike is being built, the team will commute.  And then, even after we’ve delivered each bike to the rider, we will commute by bike until at least a combined 7,000 miles are logged for each Earth Day bike sold.

This post is getting long.  Next time I’ll post about Seven’s electricity use.  This is the area over which we have the most control; and, to me, this is the most mentally stimulating part—and the area in which we learned the most about Seven and our manufacturing future.

Comments

[Matt Sheridan]

Rob, I am very intersted to see some of your thoughts on cutting electricity consumption on these frames. I assume you are looking at total usage, not just usage at Seven.
eagarly anticipating!!
Matt

[Yoshi]

I have been interested in long life design. The idea of mass production and consumption is over and long life design is needed, today. If we think of it in bicycles, the products we make would be accommodated. One of the examples is that the bikes made of titanium and steel can be repaired and kept being used. How about carbon bikes? If we can design carbon bikes or a system which can be fixed and used again, it would be wonderful and could be a bike in long life design and be as a new bike. In order to have a view of long life design and to design, it will be needed if how much we can see a cycle deeply about how the things are made and sold and used and scrapped or recycled. Can we make the system clearly to our society through the bicycles we make? I think Seven is very close there. Don’t you think so?