What does purchasing a bag for your bicycle have to do with a zero waste future? Who knows, maybe nothing… a lot of the stuff Sean comes up with seems a bit off. This is the first in a series of what we’ll call Musings from Life on Two Wheels. Cycling is a huge part of living sustainably, and something we want to highlight here at Greenish. Here are Sean’s latest musings on his awesome bike bag and a local, Ontario company called Vélocolour that makes terrific products, while making tangible efforts to be more sustainable.

18 years ago (2001), I embarked on a journey that would present me with new challenges on a daily basis, provide comfort to me in my darkest hours, terrify me, excite me, anger and frustrate me, and allow me to truly understand love. Atop a mid-90s CCM X-Heat mountain bike* and dripping sweat, wheezing with disconcerting volume and receiving loud encouragement from a friend literally riding circles around me, I made it to the top of the aptly-named Heart Attack hill on the fire road out of work. I’d ridden bikes beginning as a toddler, but I fell in love that day.

I’ve owned 15 bicycles in the years since summiting the loose gravel on that hill (about half home-built from the frame). I’ve put a lot of money (I regret nothing!) into bike accessories, parts and tools in that time as well. I tend to do a lot of research and purchase well designed, durable, quality products whenever I can. This summer was the first time I purchased a … new bike toy … with the circular economy in mind.

What's the Circular Economy, you ask? Good question. Click here.

Back to the toy. I “needed” a new bag that could house my questionably curated and increasingly redundant bike toolkit. I wanted one that could fit in a standard water bottle cage, allowing for easy transfer from one bike to another. After countless internet research hours, a litany of inventive dismissals from my wife when I sought her input (she’s not that into bikes), and an exhausting accounting of all the reasons why my existing bags would not suffice, I ended up purchasing the VéloColour Bidon Stuff Bag.

As the photos demonstrate, I’m not classy enough to clean the mud off a product before taking a promotional photo of it (that ain’t our style). They also demonstrate that the bag is in fantastic condition after a little over 3000 km of use. I make no effort to be kind to my bicycle kit, and this Bidon Stuff bag has been tossed around, run over, left out in the rain (multiple times), and is currently frozen in the snow and ice to the back deck. The Bidon Stuff Bag is designed for a 28mm tube and levers, plus maybe a multi-tool or some other small items. I use mine exclusively as a toolkit, as I run larger tires and keep tubes elsewhere on the bike.

While I often try to support local business, I made this specific purchase after reading about the efforts VéloColour makes to prioritize sustainability in their production choices. You can get 15% just for riding your bike to their shop! Of specific interest to me was their partnership with Terracycle – a unique company that finds solutions for hard-to-recycle items – and the option to drop off old bike bags at the VéloColour shop for future reuse/recycling. Terracycle will take odd waste products – like damaged or no-longer-needed bike bags – and find a company that can use that waste as a resource in its own manufacturing.

So, now, the super important, Greenish part of this whole thing:

Creating sustainable markets for recyclable materials – whether it’s recovered plastic in your curbside recycling bin or used fabric to be sewn into something new – is the foundation of establishing a circular economy over time. Recycling is only truly effective if there is someone waiting in line to buy the recycled content after it makes through the recycling plant (those are called material recovery facilities, or MRFs). When companies like VéloColour collect old bags and try to find ways to integrate recycled content into new, they create value where there was formerly waste (or negative value). This value provides incentive to keep the (now formerly waste) material circulating through the economy:

When a consumer chooses to purchase locally made products from companies that prioritize social and environmental equity, they are making a more than just a greenish choice – they are buying into a more sustainable economy for everyone.

I am extremely happy with my VéloColour bag, not just because it works as advertised, but because I know I my money went to a company trying hard to do things the right way.

I’ll be talking about waste management policy concepts - product stewardship, extended producer responsibility, and the circular economy - in future posts. I’ll do my best to demonstrate these concepts in relatable and tangible ways. I’ll probably fail a lot. Let me know how we could do better.

-SH

NOTE: Greenish will profile companies making investments in sustainable business practices in some of our blogs and posts. We will always disclose when we’ve been paid to do so. VéloColour didn’t pay us for this. They don’t even know who we are, but we like them. We’re mostly just kinda hoping they don’t sue.

Bicycle Bags and the Circular Economy