Issue 114 - Sustainability Issue

The Sustainability Issue

We like to think that cycling is among the greenest and most sustainable things we can do. Getting around by bike is cleaner, greener, cheaper, faster, healthier, more pleasant, more fun, quieter, more considerate and mostly easier than motorised transport.

However, as an industry and as a sport, we have a long, long way to go. Like any commercial enterprise, cycling relies on riders buying bikes and their constituent parts or clothes. There’s an environmental cost to manufacturing and transporting cycling gear. As for professional cycling, the sport moves vehicles, infrastructure and a lot of people from country to country and continent to continent, and its carbon footprint is huge.

This edition of Rouleur is based around the idea of sustainability. We look at the problems cycling faces, but also at the solutions that some creative, innovative and far-sighted people are coming up with. But we also ask how riders, teams and race followers sustain their own lives in cycling.

Cycling is as close to a silver bullet for many of the ills of modern life as you could find and it’s important to promote it, advocate for it and educate people about its benefits. As long as we face up to the challenges posed by the environmental cost the activity and sport still have, cycling can contribute to saving the world.

Netflix Does Cycling

Laura Winter, who works as a journalist and presenter in both F1 and cycling, asks how the upcoming Netflix docuseries filmed at the 2022 Tour de France will affect coverage of cycling and bring new audiences to the sport. Drive to Survive hugely expanded the popularity of F1 - can Netflix do the same for cycling?

The Right Time: Ralph Denk interview

Bora-Hansgrohe is one of the WorldTour’s best teams, and they achieved their best ever result when Jai HIndley won this year’s Giro. Their manager Ralph Denk tells Rouleur how the team has got better and better, year by year, providing a perfect model of sustainable growth.

You Don’t Have To Make A Choice

Photographer Jojo Harper covered the Tour de France Femmes this year, with a baby in tow. She explains how she juggled following the race and taking some of the event’s defining images, with looking after a young family.

The Clothing Dilemma

The cycling clothing industry faces a dilemma in a changing world: how to turn a profit but do so sustainably and in an environmentally friendly manner. Rouleur looks at what the industry is doing and can do better.

Small is Beautiful

Is the Tour de France, and WorldTour cycling itself, damaging to the environment? The short answer is yes. Rouleur looks at the environmental impact of the world’s biggest race after the hottest summer in living memory.

Bigger than Bike Racing

Women’s cycling finally got its Tour de France this year, and the event was a huge success. Rouleur was there to witness history being made.

Just Ride: Daniel Oss interview

We catch up with the popular Italian star, who has applied careful thought to how he can maximise his cycling talents, but more importantly, keep himself happy and balanced and sustain a longer career as a result.

Art Cycle: When a Proto-Punk Dandy Elevated the Bicycle Wheel to High Art

The latest in our series on the overlap between art and cycling looks at Marcel Duchamp, a chess-playing polymath who incorporated parts of a bike into one of his most famous works.

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