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Q. Dear Umbra,
As a frequent cyclist, I’ve inevitably been in my share of collisions and accidents. Most bike experts recommend replacing your helmet after any crash, even if the damage isn’t visible. Obviously the two most important qualities of a bike helmet are lightweight-ness and strength. That is best achieved by petroleum-based, non-biodegradable substances. Can you recommend how to avoid hurting the environment with these disposable Styrofoam helmets (other than being a more careful cyclist)?
Julia A.
Washington, D.C.
A. Dearest Julia,
Small eco-price to pay for an intact head.Please continue to wear your helmet and replace it after each crash. Cut the straps of your old helmet and write “crashed” on it with a permanent marker, then throw it in the garbage. Biking safely is an ecologically correct practice, even if it occasionally results in a small amount of waste. Two, three, four helmets a year is a small ecological price to pay when we consider the benefits of cycling (though for your body’s sake I hope you don’t go through this many).
Let us remember that biking is emissions-free transportation. Whether you are commuting by bike or simply taking a brief trip to the store every week, you are ecologically ahead of almost every form of transport save walking. If your bike is simply an exercise device, you are keeping yourself fit and providing inspiration for other would-be cyclists.
Secondly, a lightweight helmet made out of plastic is a fairly innocuous object on the environmental scale. As we have learned over the years, plastic is evil due to the raw materials (petroleum) from which it is made and the eons that will pass ere it degrades. On the bright side, helmets are light, and hence do not require overly much fuel on their trip to the bike store or the landfill—which would be a concern were they made of gold. Some companies are tinkering with eco-friendly helmets, but I think you should not lose your head over this issue. You could always save your used helmets for some kind of trash sculpture.
Julia, a hospital visit has the potential for much more ecological impact than does your discarded helmet. Your fitness level keeps you (hopefully) from general ill health, and hence reduces the need for greenhouse-gas emitting trips to the doctor. More important, of course, the helmet protects you from serious head injury and/or death, both of which are far more environmentally costly than a piddling nine-ounce helmet. Let’s say you were not wearing a helmet and bonked your head in a crash. First the ambulance or a friend’s car has to transport you to (and from) the hospital, emitting Earth-damaging gases en route. Then perhaps you have to get a CAT scan or MRI, neither of which would be solar powered. What if you have a bleeding abrasion that requires multiple washings and several sets of bloody sheets and piles of gauze? Maybe they bring you a hospital meal which certainly includes terrible not-shade-grown coffee and some kind of mystery meat from a confined animal feeding operation. In a worst-case scenario, you could scrape off your nose and require years of plastic surgery—certainly not ecologically OK, and sadly a real-life example.
Wear a bike helmet without worrying too much about the environmental consequences. Umbra, also known as Safety Pup, has spoken.
Cautionarily,
Umbra
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Comments
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DannyGirl Posted 11:50 pm
20 Oct 2009
The only place I've seen that take styrofoam packing frames (analogous to bike helmet inserts) is this collection bin at IKEA in Renton, near the check-out exit. I have no idea what they do with them (they also collect other hard-to-recycle items that represent the products they peddle.)
I would think that IF YOU REMOVED all non-stryo parts of the helmet (outer shell, chin straps, foamy inner pads, etc) then you could probably recycle the styrofoam part at IKEA. Unless someone has other info?
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ViridianSeattle Posted 9:55 am
21 Oct 2009
http://bicyclesafe.com/
has a great set of simple techniques to follow. And whatever you do "don't panic" - cycling is safer than not cycling:
http://policy.rutgers.edu/faculty/pucher/Pucher_Dill_Handy10.pdf
"Bicycling is healthy.
...
The combined evidence presented in these studies indicates that the health benefits of bicycling far exceed the health risks from traffic injuries, contradicting the widespread misperception that bicycling is a dangerous activity. Moreover, as bicycling levels increase, injury rates fall, making bicycling safer and providing even larger net health benefits"
Enjoy the fall weather and get out and bike!
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DannyGirl Posted 10:05 am
21 Oct 2009
It was about helmets and what to do with them after a theoretical crash. :-/
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cyclelicious Posted 10:15 am
21 Oct 2009
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spaceshaper Posted 1:09 am
22 Oct 2009
"the helmet protects you from serious head injury and/or death".
No it will not. It's a lightweight piece of styrofoam with a bunch of holes in it, for goodness sake. A motorcycle helmet will hold up when run over by a truck tire - no consumer-grade bike helmet will do that.
Fortunately, bike accidents involving serious head injuries are pretty rare, and that's true both for those who wear helmets and those who don't. As Viridian points out, it's more important for your safety to USE your head when cycling than to cover it with a flimsy piece of plastic. And by the way, I've never seen a bike helmet that provides much facial-abrasion protection either. You may still need that nose job, helmet or not, if you ride carelessly.
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DannyGirl Posted 8:25 am
22 Oct 2009
If you don't believe me, try this experiment on yourself: sit on a bicycle, fully upright. No movement (which is in most crashes). Just sit. You're probably sitting 6 feet tall or so. Now, tuck your shoulders out of the way, and let the bicycle and you fall over in a perfect arc. No slumping and falling on your arms or hands. The object is get your head to bounce off the pavement from a 6 foot drop with no helmet. Have you done it? Ok, assuming you survive your head cracking open like an egg, go ahead and post the results here some months later when you re-gain the ability to speak and think and write and everything else.
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ViridianSeattle Posted 9:02 am
22 Oct 2009
DG, someone has already done a much more interesting experiment. It's called Holland. They took a country of 16 plus million people - had most of them ride bikes in a wide variety of circumstances and focused on:
* cyclist training
* driver training
* good infrastructure
* not wearing helmets ever (to a first approximation)
The results? A death and serious injury rate that's far lower than what you see in the helmet-wearing US. So helmets might be helpful around the margins but it's clear that they are no magic bullet for keeping cyclists alive.
Further, we know that:
* helmet laws discourage cycling
and there's some evidence that:
* having more cyclists on the road increases road safety for cyclists and drivers
So it's easy to imagine that thoughtless helmet promotion is a bad idea.
Does this mean that wearing a helmet is a bad idea? No, it may well give you some additional safety. But it does mean you should *not* ride any more aggressively with a helmet (most riders do - and given the very limited protection bike helmets give even in the most favorable studies that can easily leave you less safe).
And you should think very hard before supporting helmet promotion or helmet laws.
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spaceshaper Posted 9:17 am
22 Oct 2009
But the point is that head injuries are not the most serious threat to cyclists safety - I believe it's around ten per cent of all major bike accidents involve head impacts. Over the years I have had several friends involved in serious bike accidents, one who suffered a major neck injury and narrowly escaped paralysis, another broke his pelvis (twice), a third, it's still burned into my memory more than two decades later, was sideswiped by a delivery truck on a London street and died on impact. All were dutifully wearing helmets which did nothing, nothing to protect them from the actual injuries they sustained.
I'm not suggesting that cycling is an inherently dangerous activity, it's not. Nor am I saying there's no point in wearing a helmet. Just please don't think (or let your children think) that a helmet is a magic talisman of protection. To reiterate: the most important cycling safety feature is what goes on inside the skull, not what goes around it. Please ride safely, whatever you wear.
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DannyGirl Posted 9:23 am
22 Oct 2009
Cute. Sure - in Holland people go everywhere, on flat even terrain, surrounded shoulder to shoulder with other cyclists in a richly bike-centric culture. That's not the dynamics we work with here: hills, cars far numbering cyclists, and a very "car-centric, bicycle-invisible" mindset.
Look, people will walk away with a basic idea of 'helmets good' or 'helmets bad'. What you're talking about takes skill to avoid serious head injuries in the absence of helmets. That's all well and good but it doesn't make for good general audience messenging which has to take into account that there are no manditory trainings for biking like cars, no testing and licensing of any kind. People view bikes as being basically toys, we let our small children ride them nearly unattended and just go from there.
Sure a helmet is not a bubble. It won't save you from tearing up your entire body in the event of a bad crash. All kind of bad things could happen to you. But a simple crash with some road rash shouldn't automatically be pre-packaged with a concussion also. Helmets work.
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spaceshaper Posted 5:45 am
25 Oct 2009
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sindark Posted 9:12 am
22 Oct 2009
Stores will take them back and give you 30% or more off a new one. Hopefully, the old helmets are then partially or fully recycled.
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filups Posted 3:29 pm
26 Oct 2009
I'm a little perturbed by this misleading statement. I mean really, it's right in an article ABOUT some of the emissions resulting from bicycling (plastic helmets). Then there's the steel, plastic, and rubber to make the bicycle, the frequently used grease, wax, inner tubes, light batteries. And I don't know about you, but when I'm biking 12 miles a day to and from work, I eat a heck of a lot more food, and there's probably some evidence of food having it's own emissions... ;) So why can't we be honest and straightforward about this; bicycling has very low emissions compared to cars. NOT zero.
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