In short: A space for you to share brands that produce bikes, gear, components, nutritionals, etc, etc in an environmentally sustainable fashion.
Brands that focus on producing their goods with minimal ecological footprint, ethical manufacturing practices, smart packaging, recyclable/repairable goods, or local-to-you manufacturing. Brands that you admire, that 'do it right', and go above and beyond.
Would love for this to be a resource for mountain bikers (and brands) to reference. So when it's time to invest in new gear, you can invest in quality goods from quality brands that have the earth and longevity in mind.
Mention a brand or brands, why you admire/support them and drop a link to where we can learn more.
Side note: Maybe there's a separate space to discuss brands that are 'doing it wrong' in terms of their footprint, packaging, material, and manufacturing practices - In hopes that it'll create some change... Maybe for another day. I'd rather focus on the positives.
I'd like to nominate all the brands that make steel or Ti frames.
I'll kick this off with a mention to Patagonia for their mountain bike clothing. Being as big of a brand as they are, I think it's admirable that so much of their focus goes into producing gear with recycled materials, produced in fair trade factories, and their commitment to repairing/recycling clothing. I have a few pieces of their mountain bike specific clothing and they've all performed great and have held up.
I’ve been using this Clean Grit bike wash, a Swedish brand for cleaning and protecting my bike, so far I’ve been impressed with the result.
https://cleangrit.se/sv
Titanium has been shown to have a high carbon footprint. According to Reynolds it's 3x the footprint of steel, placing it up around carbon.
This will be biased to NA companies as an eastern Canadian
Parts
Ron King Cage
Wolftooth
Industry Nine
Chris King
We Are One
Project 321
Clothing
Ornot
RideNF
Trees Mountain apparel
Tools
Abbey
Alt/Alt
As for chain lube, bike wash, degreaser and grease, there are often good local option at your local hardware store that can replace bike branded stuff that get shipped from all over the world. If not then brand like Effetto Mariposa, Danico, Peaty are a good sustainable option.
And there is probably a good bag maker near you if you are into bikepacking. For me that would be Gurp, Atelier de la Chaudiere, Kel Tech Gear, Orangecat and probably a few more.
Osprey uses bluesign® approved 100% recycled fabrics in close to 100% of their range, eliminated PFAS-based DWR in 100% of their textile products.
Chris king
Hope
Green Oil
Didn't know that. Both bullet points are pretty cool in their own way.
There is a solid Blister podcast recently with the FlyLow founder where they discuss pfas free dwr.
California is requiring all outerwear to be pfas free starting in 2025 so any company wanting to sell there or to a large store (Evo, REI, etc) who has locations there will be pfas free soon.
Thank you for pointing that out earleb. Steel it is then!
Sorry for mild derailment, but, link to source? Very curious to read more & understand why.
There is not much space for sustainability/environmentalism in a high consumption sport like mountain biking. As far as equipment goes, the most sustainable thing you can do is buy a bike that will last you more than a season or two, and avoid driving a lifted Tacoma to the trailhead.
All this virtue signaling is BS. Feel free to pay more to help yourself feel better but don’t for a second actually believe it has any benefit other than that.
The most sustainable choice is to simply wear 2nd hand clothes and own a sewing needle.
Well a person has two options:
1) Try to make the best decisions possible (vote with your dollar) while still living life. This is in regard to sustainability, social causes, etc.
OR
2) Take up direct action to spark a groundswell revolution and remove the late-stage capitalist system that will ultimately destroy the planet if not reigned in.
Very few if any are choosing number two, so might as well strive for option one. Or just pick nihilism and wait for it all to crumble anyway.
I'll offer up two:
1. Mountain flow eco wax makes several plant based bike oils and cleaners that are biodegradable
2. WNDR Alpine makes a few good shirts that work great for biking made of recycled polyester and algae
Cotic also said they are not even considering building Ti bikes as the footprint is much worse compared to steel
To continue the good words about Osprey, I ripped my pack on a limb and contacted them about a repair. They repaired the pack for free. Other companies may also cover damage but Osprey actually repaired my pack rather than just replacing it and creating more waste.
Tricky topic. I've long felt one of the few people willing to put their money where their mouth with respect to sustainability is Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. He's the only "CEO types" who has gone on record multiple times telling his customers to not buy something new and instead fix/use/wear out whatever they have; he seems to genuinely want to put the idea of sustainability over that of the bottom line. Who can forget the company's Black Friday ad when they addressed consumerism head on with their "Don't Buy This Jacket - ad". (I know, it still sold stuff...)
The ultimate irony however is Patagonia can say whatever they want and position their product however they want but they don't pick who (and why) someone buys it. The truth is, most people buying their stuff are people with excess; an eight time a year skier who doesn't need another jacket or the finance bro (gulp) who doesn't need a vest to sit in the climate controlled office.
This brings me to this thread - I feel the best thing the Vital community could do, before listing those companies we feel follow sustainable practices, is to try and define what "sustainable" even means. Here is the catch - what makes "sustainability" so difficult is its an idea that is shared by both the customer and the company. Buying things you don't need or throwing out things that can be fixed is arguably more the problem, and well outside a company's reach.
To me, defining a set of values on both sides of this equation would be more impactful and useful than just rattling off a list of companies that may (or may not) fit into the sustainability "ethos". For instance, I've long held the idea there should be some sort of tax on products that are not engineered to be fixed and require replacement when fixing should be an option.
...just my $0.02
(also, just so everyone sees how cynical I've become with respect to this topic, I could write a scathing piece about Patagonia, too. So...take everything here with a grain of salt)
First brand that comes to my mind: https://www.fairbicycle.com/
They offer full disclosure of manufacturing and material origin as well minimal wage and minimum paid vacation at the supplier. As a reference you also find the minimal wage indication for every country of origin. Declared by either a relevant national union or the state itself.
Not bad! Who else can offer this?
Shoutout to that one bike shop in your region that's determined to fix anything and get your bike rolling again, no matter what. Most bike shops either don't have the skill, tools, or willpower to fix the really weird and obscure problems, but there's always one bike shop in any region that has all the right tools and staffs one or two legendary mechanics that will find a way to fix it. When I lived in Portland, OR Fat Tire Farm was famous for always having the right tool. The owner's policy was that, when any obscure repair came along, to always buy the tool because then the next time someone came in asking for the same repair the answer would be yes. That builds a reputation and eventually word gets out that, yes, Fat Tire can replace seals on your old Noleen coil shock or rebuild a Hayes Mag master cylinder.
Down in LA I'm taking my old French road bike to Shawn at Allez LA in Highland Park to get the seized driveside BB fixed cup removed. French BB's are awful because they're a propreitary size and the driveside shell is not reverse threaded. They always come loose, which means owners are liable to do horrible things like red locktite. This bike is, monetarily, worthless, but I know Shawn is going to go the extra mile because I just saw an IG reel of him welding two sawzall blades together to get an old stuck seatpost out of a similarly worthless but beloved old bicycle.
And if you don't follow Jon Lindgren, aka AngryBikeMechanic on instagram, you really should. Mechanics like this keep a lot of bikes out of the landfill, which is pretty cool in my bike. The best bike will always be the one you have. In the shortrun, I don't think these sorts of repairs always pencil out from a monetary point of view for the business, because labor is expensive. But I think mechanics and stories like this are magnetic, and I think saying "no we can't fix that" all the time isn't.
Pretty sure I saw an Instagram story where Travis of NF was saying that they would repair other brands clothing too. Just goes to show their commitment to sustainability. They also had/have a page with used clothing for sale. One man's trash...
Seems like a different topic for the off the bike forum. This seems like a good place to list brands and anecdotes and people can make their own decisions.
I listed Chris king earlier because based on my experience the company is financially invested in lowering their foot print on the manufacturing side and their products are known to last on the consumer side. If someone wants to buy a diffirent color set of hubs/headset while the old ones sit a box in the garage for fashion purposes I don’t see how that’s really a factor.
Fair, but if you want to list companies that have some sort of sustainability initiative we could go to ChatGPT (or any of the mega models) and conjure up a really good list in about 15 minutes of prompting. Maybe I'm alone but I don't see a lot of value in taking what a company says on the sustainability/environmentalism front and being a cheerleader. I'm not saying its bad, but it doesn't seem all that interesting or groundbreaking of a thread (its right there for anyone to figure out).
What seems far more important is to first define what a community believes matters with respect to the underlying idea of sustainability - then perhaps a higher fidelity list of good/bad companies could be put together. The big problem with our current approach is it leans heavily into whatever the marketing department is saying at a respective company. While I'm not saying they are lying, I am saying its maybe not as unicorns and butterflies as they claim, plus it ignores the companies that may have very good environmental/sustainability practices, but they just don't advertise them (or don't even realize it themselves). For instance, what if a company builds a product (like a chain) with a higher carbon footprint but it outlasts every other product on the market by an order of magnitude? I'd argue this is a far more sustainable product than the company who builds a chain at a lower environmental impact but you have to replace it far more often.
To your second point, not sure if it was aiming at me, but buying something is (almost) always worse than not buying something if you care about "environment", "carbon footprint" and "sustainability". The most sustainable thing to do is NOT buy the product that you don't need because "zero" is always better than "something" when it comes to environmental impact, which all manufacturing has. To add, nobody needs high end specialty bicycle products. This is why you'll rub a certain number of people the wrong way, rooted in the underlying idea is a "stepping over dollars to save pennies" type of feel (though in this case pennies can be subbed out for "environmental impact".) I know, its better to do some good than no good, but in just typing that you should be able to see ethics, morals and environmental philosophy is very intertwined with this topic. I'm not sure how someone can ignore this fact.
Flylow fan, been skiing in magnum pants and a quantum jacket for about 11 years now and gear is still going strong. Easy to repair and you can send stuff in to them for repair if needed. I don't own any of their MTB stuff, but if I were in the market for MTB specific clothing I'd check them out, and they're a Colorado business (granted they mfg in China).
I'm a big fan of Squirt wax emulsion chain lube and they're a Colorado business https://squirtcycling.us/pages/biodegradability
I think Devinci deserve a mention-locally sourced alloy,made in Canada and moving away from carbon produced in the far east.That said aluminium smelting is really energy intensive but most of what we do/consume has an impact.....
Amen! I was thinking the same thing. We could all go on and on about “sustainability” in the bike industry. News flash, There isn’t ANY!!! It is a market meant for you to buy something new every year, or even twice a year. Everyone of us is using rubber tires, that contributes to massive deforestation.
A “sustainable” bike company is a bunch of bull shit.
news flash buying a 10k bike, sprinter van, and some recycled riding gear or shoes doesn’t make you sustainable. It makes you an agent of capitalism. Want to be sustainable stop buying shit. Go to the junk yard meltdown old frames cast your own. Make all your own stuff from trash…..
this forum is so whack.
Good for everyone who sleeps so well at night for buying recycled Patagonia or an osprey pack with no “forever chemicals”. In ten years we will all hear how thenew PTFA free DWR coating will be even worse than it’s predecessor.
Just look at Sucralose and sugar.
Again this all such bull shit. Wanna talk real sustainably stop buying things and supporting capitalism.
We definitely shouldn't treat this cancer patient. Other people are still going to get cancer.
Medicine is all bullshit.
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