There are numerous health benefits to cycling.
These include lower blood pressure, weight maintenance, and generally much better health.
But, there is another way that cycling is good for you and that’s the way it’s good for the environment.
The environmental benefits of cycling include all of the following and probably more.
- Reduce Servicing Cars – Even if you don’t get rid of your car, you can reduce car servicing if you cycle when you can instead of driving. The fewer times you change your oil, fill your tank, and drive your car, the less pollution you’re responsible for.
- Reduce Car Part Waste – Every car must be built and that takes materials, water, and other resources to accomplish. If you cycle instead of drive all the time, you can avoid buying a car, which means that one less car is produced to cause pollution and waste.
- Reduce Use of Roads – Vehicles cause wear and tear on roads, which are also made from fossil fuel products. This wear and tear ends up in the environment and the air where people breathe in, and it winds up in the water too.
- Reduce Carbon Emissions – Getting rid of one car off the road can reduce air pollution by 1.3 billion cubic yards. Plus, there will be less brake debris, worn roads, or tire particles going into the air – which can amount to as much as 40 pounds per year per vehicle based on how much the average person drives.
- Use Less Fuel – This is obvious, but the average car owner uses almost 700 gallons of fuel a year. By cycling instead of driving a car, this is a substantial amount of pollution that can be easily avoided. Over half of all oil becomes gasoline.
- No More Batteries – While we want to think of electric cars as eco-friendly, and while they are mildly better than gas vehicles, there is still the problem of battery pollution. In fact, your electric battery is only as clean as the energy used to charge it.
- No More Motor Oil – The problem is that any type of oil is toxic to life. Used motor oil is the main pollution you’ll find in lakes, streams, and rivers. Each car consumes, just for lubricant oil, in one oil change enough to pollute up to a million gallons of fresh water.
Motor oil is slow to degrade; it sticks to everything, and is a major source of water pollution today.
If you really want to clean up the environment, do what you can to bike more, and use fewer petroleum-based products.
Cycling will do double duty by making both you and the environment healthier.
