Originally Posted by
willibrord
Steel has a high carbon footprint, as high CO2 coking coal is burned in the steel making process .Al uses a lot of electrical energy to refine, it was very expensive to make Alu until electrical power became plentiful. Carbon fiber sequesters carbon in the bike frame, it isn't emitted into the atmosphere as GHG gases.
maybe.....but what about the total lifecycle? are you considering the service life
of each material? alu frame will last how long....ten years maybe? steel frame
will last......well....mostly forever. how long does a typical crabon frame last?
and when they finally die, both steel and inferior aluminium are easily recycled,
whereas crabon lives forever in landfills, leaching toxic chemicals.
so to be fair, you need to compare the crabon footprint of 1 steel frame to
3 aluminium frames to 6 crabon frames.