Originally Posted by cyccommute

Before getting out the scourges, take a step back and look at scale. There has been about 1 billion bicycles made up to now. At an average of 30 lb of metal apiece, that would be 15,000,000 tons of metal. That’s a lot but it pales in comparison to that used in cars. Just GM has made 500 million cars at an average of about 2000 lbs each. Let’s say 80% of that is metal or about 1600 lb. That’s 400,000,000 tons of metal mined and refined. Ford and Chrysler have similar counts so that 1.5 billion cars or 1.2 billion tons of metal.

Bicycles have used 1.25% of the metal used for cars. Or, to put it another way, the total output of bicycles in history is equal to fewer than 18,000,000 cars or about a quarter of the number of cars made in one year. It took about 120 years to make a billion bicycles. We bicyclists don’t contribute a lot to the issues of the day.