Fling & The Environment

Chasing the Holy Grail – Responsible Fun!

For a number of years, we’ve felt a little guilty about the resources putting on our events consume and the fuel burnt by riders coming to these events by car or plane. The great advantage of the events however are the huge health and social benefits they offer, and the opportunities they provide for community fundraising.

Wild Horizons has a strong record on environmental initiatives.

In 2007 The Highland Fling became Australia’s first mountain bike event to go Carbon Neutral. We calculated every aspect of energy used to run the Highland Fling (right down to travel for the water tanker and portaloo delivery, as well as the generators that powered the coffee vans). We then offset that coal-fired power load by helping fund the equivalent energy from Australasian energy efficiency and renewable biomass projects. The Fling was Carbon Neutral for three years, up until 2009.

However, for various reasons, including the uncertainty surrounding the roll out of a national Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), finding Australian-based projects suitable for carbon offsetting has become difficult.

But our other eco-initiatives remain. The Highland Fling continues to be a low waste event. We provide on-site waste and recycling separation facilities, which includes running a drinks container deposit scheme to ensure as many aluminium cans and PET bottles are recycled as possible.. All event caterers are required to provide compostable or recyclable plates, bowls, cutlery, cups, etc. Wild Horizons encourages event participants to fully engage with the Fling’s low waste ethic: please bring your bowls and cups, and remember that improperly discarding rubbish during the event is official grounds for disqualification.

The Highland Fling will, continue to operate as a Bottled Water Free event. This is in keeping with the village of Bundanoon’s position as Australia’s First Bottled Water Free Town. No single use bottled water will be sold at the Fling. Free water refill facilities will be provided for event participants, marshalls and visitors.

(Since Bundanoon went bottled water free in September 2009, worldwide recognition of this endeavour has been enormous, with Huw Kingston—the man behind both that initiative and the Highland Fling—being honoured by Time Magazine as one of their 25 Global Responsibility Pioneers as well as being selected as news.com.au’s 2009 Green Hero. For full details see www.bundyontap.com.au)

Robust environmental efforts are only effective when a community is fully engaged with them. A wide variety of local community groups have embraced the Highland Fling’s minimal waste objectives and for their efforts they are able to access, collectively, about $40,000 annually in much needed fundraising.

Community engagement also extends to the wider cycling fraternity, be they fiercely professional competitive riders or casual flingers. Although not offering carbon emission offsets for the 2010 Highland Fling, Wild Horizons has put together a bunch of thoughts for riders who want to contribute to a saner, low carbon world.

The bicycle is the most efficient form of transport yet devised by humankind (travel by bike uses up to four times less energy than walking, and 53 times less than driving a car — yet the energy needed to build one car could produce 100 bicycles), so the more we can all do to promote these two wheeled wonders the better off we, and our wee planet, will be.

For as science fiction writer H. G. Wells once noted

“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”

Share

When travelling to bike events, or weekend rides, check around for others headed the same way and travel together. An average Australian passenger car emits just less than 200 grams of carbon dioxide for every kilometre travelled. For larger 4WDs this is almost 50% higher, at just under 300 grams of CO2 per kilometre. Two riders car-sharing cuts these figures in half, whilst providing companionship to brag or commiserate with.

The Rack

Where possible drive with your bike stowed inside your vehicle. It’s more secure and sure cuts down on fuel consumption and carbon emissions. Empty roof racks decrease a car’s fuel efficiency by up to 10%. Stick our favourite sports toy up on top and your fuel economy may plummet by up to 27%.

Inflation

Check your car tyre pressure before setting out on the drive. Properly inflated tyres decrease rolling resistance, meaning your vehicles moves further and faster with less energy consumed. For example you use 3% more fuel if driving 90 km/h with your tyres just 1 bar (or 14 psi) below their recommended pressure.

Unfeel The Need for Speed

Aside from avoidance of speeding fines—sure to put the dampener on an otherwise great weekend jaunt—travel at higher speeds makes your vehicle work harder, causing it to draw on extra fuel. Your car uses 25% more fuel charging about at 110km/h than cruising along at 90km/h. For every extra litre of fuel expended, another 2.3 kg of carbon dioxide is emitted.

Air in Your Hair

Similarly, using car air conditioning increases your cars fuel consumption and therefore greenhouse gas emissions by up to 10%. And studies show that using the A/C under 18°C offers no difference in passenger comfort anyhow.

Bike to Work

Riding to the office not only saves money, it keeps you fit and spritely. Plus it’s safer than not cycling to work. A Danish study assessing the health status of 30,000 people over a 14 year period found that, with all other factors being equal, simply cycling to work lowered the risk of death by 40%. Bicycle Victoria calculate that if you pedal at about 20 kilometres per hour, for half an hour, then you’d burn the energy roughly equivalent to five Weetbix, or three bananas.

A bicycle commuter who rides about 6.5 kms to work, each work day avoids over 900 kg of CO2 emissions, annually. Admittedly there may be some practical considerations for a commute to your workplace. So lobby your employer for secure cycle parking, as well as showering and change facilities. Tell them that studies show that cyclists have at least 15% lower absenteeism than non-cyclist workers, with the higher the frequency and longer the distance cycled, the lower the rate of absenteeism. Other studies show a 4% increase in productivity, and 47% less task errors for physically fit employees.

Health

A regular cyclist is considered to have the fitness level of a non-cyclist 10 years their junior. A US study, looking at 18,000 women over a 15 year period, observed that the women who cycled for at least two or three hours a week were 46% less likely to gain weight. Children who ‘actively’ commute to school have higher levels of physical activity and improved  cardiovascular fitness compared with children who do not walk or cycle to school.

Liveability

Mountain biking may be a recreational activity that takes place in the bush, but truth be known Australia is one of the most urbanised countries in the world. Most of us live in cities. Up to 40% of our urban areas have been stolen by motor vehicle infrastructure, that is roads, car parking, vehicle manufacture, service stations, and the like. Yet 42 folding bikes, or up to a dozen standard bicycles, can fit into the same space as one parked car. Speaking of parking, bicycles are the best form of city transport to get you door-to-door. There have been many city transport races, pitting all modes of transport against each other (car, bus, train, tram, bicycle and even helicopter), but whether run in Adelaide, London or San Paulo, the result is always the same—the cyclist finishes first.

Bike Heaven

Not everyone has a wallet or purse fat enough to afford the latest in mountain bike technology, but everyone still deserves the world’s most efficient transport. If you have access to bikes you, or friends, no longer need check out the Bicycle Recycling Network (www.bicyclerecycling.com) , who have a list of bike reuse and recycling centres around Australia. Give your old bike a well earned afterlife

Alternatively, consider supporting some of the international endeavours, like the Bicycling Empowerment Network (benbikes.org.za/namibia), in Namibia, Africa, established by an ex-editor of Australian Cyclist. When a bike can carry up to five times the weight, go four times as fast and travel four times as far as a person walking, you get a sense of very significant change bicycles can bring to a person’s life and a community’s future. When you have no other form for transport, bicycles are quickly adapted to become delivery vans, ambulances, water trucks and even school buses.

Kids

Improving bike path networks in our urban centres has the dual benefit of reducing car use and increasing safety. For instance, at least 20% of morning peak traffic results from children being driven to school by parents, even though approximately 77% of Australian families live within 5km of school. One study found that between 1971 and 2003 the proportion of children taking the car to and from school in Sydney has more than tripled. Reducing car traffic around schools increases child safety, with pedestrian injury the leading cause of child injury death in Australia, (one fatality almost every week, and for each child who dies as a pedestrian, 25 other children will be admitted to hospital with injuries). The estimated costs of traffic congestion are $5 billion Australian per year. Yet in Denmark where now 77% of children ‘actively’ commute to school (ie, walking or cycling), child pedestrian and cyclist fatalities in 2001, reduced to one eighth and one sixth respectively compared to 1981 rates.

Safety

It has been shown that active cyclists absorb lower levels of pollutants from traffic fumes than sedentary car drivers. That said the simplest way to make public roads safer for cyclists is to increase the number of people on bikes. Become a financial member of your state’s cycle advocacy group. Support them to support you. Amongst other great work, bicycle advocacy groups work to increase the availability of dedicated cycleways, which improve cycle safety in car dependent countries like Australia, where 86% of cyclists deaths from 1997 to 2004 resulted from collisions with motor vehicles. Yet for equal rates of participation, cycling has fewer hospitalisations than non-contact sports like netball and basketball, with four and half times less hospitalisations than snow and ice sports.

IMBA Australia: www.imba-au.com

Bicycle New South Wales: www.bicyclensw.org.au

Bicycle Victoria: www.bv.com.au

Bicycle South Australia: www.bikesa.asn.au

Bicycle Queensland: www.bq.org.au

Bicycle Tasmania: www.biketas.org.au

Bicycle Western Australia: www.bicyclewa.com.au

Cycling Northern Territory: www.nt.cycling.org.au

Pedal Power ACT: www.pedalpower.org.au

Cycling Resource Centre: www.cyclingresourcecentre.org.au

Australian Bicycle Council: www.austroads.com.au

Trails

If, however, you have a total aversion to any form of bitumen riding, then consider picking up a shovel to become a trail fairy for your favourite trail network. Properly constructed single track reduces undesirable environmental impacts of soil erosion and stormwater runoff. And support the work of IMBA International Mountain Bicycling Association) Australia, (imba-au.com) who have as their mission: “To set a standard in the sustainable trail development and management that is world class, which enables mountain bike riding to be accepted on all levels of government so that more Australians can participate in this activity to maintain health, well being and a connection with nature.”

See you on the bike!