Originally Posted by
Polaris OBark
I just read the article. I don't see anything to object to. He did miss another important concern: carbon fiber is a bit of an environmental/public health disaster, both to manufacture and to dispose of (I don't think most, other than the new Chris King rims, can be recycled).
This is true but not important in the big picture. A steel frame uses around 5kg CO2, while a carbon frame uses around 50kg CO2.
So whilst that is a big difference, it pales into insignificance compared to even the CO2 shipping costs. Air freight is around 0.5kg CO2 per kg per km. So flying a 1.5kg steel frame 5000 km would use around 3,750kg CO2 and a 1.0kg carbon frame would use 2,500kg CO2. Sea freight is much cheaper, but still around 300kg CO2 to ship a 1.5kg steel frame from the far east vs 200kg for a 1.0kg carbon frame.
So actually it is far more important to compare the environmental impact of transport than the manufacture, which is only a small part of the overall environmental impact.
Carbon fibre can also be recycled, but it usually isn’t commercially viable - probably because there isn’t very much of it to recycle. I don’t think I’ve ever had to dispose of any carbon fibre in the last 50 years.