The Tour de France and the environment...

jimmythecuckoo

I have been reading "Let my people go sufing" whilst on holiday and found it a brilliant insight into ethical business practise and oil consumption.

It got me wondering about how friendly on the environment cycling is as a human powered form of transport that doesn't consume fossil fuels.

I then thought about the Tour de France and how we see images of riders on bikes riding along leafy boulevards... and then...

Two helicopters, 40 cars, numerous plastic bags and bottles at the roadside, plenty of car miles from millions of people coming to watch...


Am I becoming a hippy or should the Tour try and be a bit more green?

afx237vi

Didn't Discovery Channel go carbon neutral two years ago? I remember they changed their jersey to include green flashes, thus making it even worse than usual.

Have to admit I do find the throwing away of bidons quite annoying to watch. I know a lot are picked up by fans and volunteers, but there must be thousands thrown away over three weeks. One of my pet hates is when you see a rider go back to the team car, get new bottles, but still throw the empties away when he could just have easily given them back through the window. Winds me up that does!

cougie

I'm pretty certain that all the bidons get hoovered up by fans along the way.

I raced an ironman the other week and we had 6 feed stations along the way. You could take on water cola or isotonic drink at each station and you lobbed your empties away before the feed. Dunno what happens to them - but we had 2500 entrants x 6 feeds x maybe 1.5 bottles average each feed ? Whats that 20,000 bidons or so ?

afx237vi

The fans pick up a lot of bidons in the Tour, sure, but think about all the other races throughout the year. You go days in the Vuelta without even seeing a fan!

cougie

Every time I catch the Vuelta - they seem to be heading thru a desert with a great big Bull statue on top of the hill. Zzzzzzzzz. Maybe its end of season fatigue ?

donrhummy

I agree on the bidons. They could easily put RFID chips on each bidon and then they'd all be easy to find.

And they could easily require that all support cars be hybrids or electric. They travel slow enough (about 15-25 mph) that even the hybrids could run entirely on electricity. And they now make motorcycles that run on hydrogen -- completely clean exhaust is water. The helicopter would then be the only problem.

cougie

Cant you get rubber band helicopters ?

donrhummy

cougie wrote:

Cant you get rubber band helicopters ?

No but there are actual pedal-powered helicopters!

Arkibal

afx237vi wrote:

Didn't Discovery Channel go carbon neutral two years ago? I remember they changed their jersey to include green flashes, thus making it even worse than usual.!

That was last year. I actually liked the kit very much.

moray_gub

afx237vi wrote:

The fans pick up a lot of bidons in the Tour, sure, but think about all the other races throughout the year. You go days in the Vuelta without even seeing a fan!

According to Dave Harmon the organisers of each race gather up he bottles after each stage. How they do this i dont know but i seem to remember him saying this .

cheers
MG

Jez mon

Yep they have a team of cleaners following the tour. However, the tour is very environmentally unfriendly.

OTOH, it probably encourages cycling, which is good.

takethehighroad

I've heard remarks about the Tour's "team of cleaners" and they go along in the morning and drive stakes into the ground at intervals along the stage and hang rubbish bags off them for fans to chuck their stuff in the bin. Then afterwards, they throw 'em all in the lorry that follows the race clearing up

2Fast4Love

Arkibal wrote:

afx237vi wrote:

Didn't Discovery Channel go carbon neutral two years ago? I remember they changed their jersey to include green flashes, thus making it even worse than usual.!

That was last year. I actually liked the kit very much.

I have this jersey, think it's great! The green flashes, the yellow Livestrong band on the sleeve... it's a work of art!

guv001

TakeTheHighRoad wrote:

Then afterwards, they throw 'em all in the lorry that follows the race clearing up

Isn't that the Broom Wagon.

CyclingBantam

I may be wrong but I am sure I have read the tour organisers are trying to do what they can to make the tour carbon neutral. I will try and find something to back up my claims though...

pottssteve

How are they going to make the Tour carbon neutral - insist on metal bike frames?

Carbon neutral is a load of cobblers anyway - largely a strategy to make people feel better about all the waste they produce. The simple way to reduce your impact on the environment is to CONSUME LESS - less fuel, less food (especially meat), less packaging, less everything else. As long as countries like the good old US of A are allowed to buy the right to pollute from poor countries which don't use all of their own, we're all shafted.

Have a look at this:
http://news.uk.msn.com/newsweek.aspx?cp ... id=8741487

France scores quite well until you read the article - it's CO2 emissions are low because of the large proportion of nuclear-generated electricity...I wonder what they plan to do with the spent fuel rods...?

calvjones

Our team is in the middle of assessing the ecological footprint of the 2007 Grand Depart - I'll be sure to post the results when done. I also contributed to the 2006 (IIRC) official guide on the subject.

As a matter of note, because it requires no new concrete being poured, and because the vast majority of the 20m spectators don't travel far to see it, the environmental impact (per capita at least) will be far more limited than, say the Olympics

jimmythecuckoo

I am not sure what they could to make it carbon neutral?!

The post above about less consumption is the way forward.

The Disco jersey was pap IMO.

kmahony

To play devil's advocate:

Isn't the world now cooling and the ozone layer filling back in?

If these people really believed in man made global warming, why did they all fly off to Bali in jumbo jets (airport couldn't hold them all, so had to keep flying off to other airports to wait for them)

Why did Al Gore (nobel peace prize winner) fly around the world in a private jet to promote his global warming film?

I doubt the TdF is good for the environment, but there's far worse things. Concentrating on bidons (like plastic bags) is missing the point completely.

jimmythecuckoo

Not neccessarily. It is the principle of wastefulness and lack of respect for the planet that needs eradicating.

simon_e

pottssteve wrote:

Carbon neutral is a load of cobblers anyway

Greenwash.

I read somewhere that there are companies that won't trade their carbon credits with the polluters. I think that is an excellent thing to do.

Update: teams consume lots of resources during a big race. Slipstream (aka Garmin) team's packing list makes for scary reading.