Update: This is on the front page of Hugg, so por favor vote for it!
Have you ever ridden a bike? Have you experienced the unmitigated exuberance that rushes through your body as you accelerate to the max whilst riding a bike down a hill? ‘Cause I know I have. Bikes truly are t-riffic (especially this energy generating green bike).
But now, thanks to Calfee Design, they are even greater. This guy makes bamboo bikes, which look awesome AND are strong as heck. Plus, since they’re made from bamboo instead of carbon fiber, they have a lower carbon footprint than normal bikes.
I hear you ask, “Hold up. Will the bamboo break?”. I am proud to answer, “NO”. Instead of using fragile fresh bamboo, Calfee uses special heat-treated bamboo, which makes for a stronger bike frame and dampens vibrations.
But to get one of these green bikes made from bamboo, you gots to pay a lot of green. The cheapest bamboo bike frame Calfee sells is about $1,700, so start saving your money if you’re planning on getting one of these mamma jammas.
February 15th, 2008 at 11:19 am
[...] A bike made from bamboo. [...]
February 15th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Where is the bamboo cultivated? Isn’t there already a shortage of bamboo in the world (I’m thinking China)? What type of labor does the physical labor?
Is the fact that this is the utilization of a dwindling plant population outweighed by the fact that this is, ostensibly, a “green” bike?
February 15th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I am not sure where that specific bamboo comes from — I do know that bamboo grows very quickly, and can be farmed relatively easily. I haven’t read about bamboo populations declining…
On a side note, since bamboo is widespread in parts of Africa, Calfee has sponsored a bamboo bike project there:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/08/africa-building-bike.html
Local materials, little processing, low cost, low eco-impact.
February 15th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Shows how little I know. I think I was just assuming that based on something I heard a long time ago. I’m happy to hear of this being worked on in Africa, it sounds ideal.
February 16th, 2008 at 7:33 am
What a gimmick…and $1700 a rip off! Green you say apart from the bamboo being chopped down to make this, more destruction to our eco system, and the special heat-treated bamboo? How did they heat it and for how long in order to get it hard? Which ever way they did it would not be eco friendly… sheets of wood are heated continuously for up to 60 days to make the base of a electric guitar because it’s quicker than waiting years for the wood to dry naturally…just imagine the amount of energy used for this and consider the bike again…is it so eco friendly…
February 17th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
If you know of a more “green” way to make bikes, please let me know. Bamboo grows very quickly, and can be sustainably harvested. And yes, 1,700 is a LOT of money, but some people are willing to pay that much for a bike (not me).
February 18th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Naysayers:
Riding a bike is better than driving a car, right? I’ll assume your answer is yes. Let’s say, then, that a bike is a green idea to begin with.
Bamboo grows darn near anywhere and doesn’t quit. It doesn’t require pesticides or fertilizers or tilling or even a lot of space. How could this not be better than using steel or aluminum (both of which come from mined ores and require massive amounts of energy to process) as bike-frame materials?
And if it works (as with anything), the price will come down. Even if it doesn’t, good for them for trying.
February 18th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Forilla.
February 18th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Are they charging this much b/c of the novelty, or what? If bamboo is so plentiful and sustainable then why charge $1700? Surely the production costs don’t even come close to that amount.
February 18th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
There are a lot of bikes out there that cost even more than that. I’m guessing they charge that much for the novelty. For some reason, some people like to spend thousands on a single bike.
February 19th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Oh barney
February 27th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Certainly part of the cost is the novelty, but keep in mind that cost for novelty is not only market-driven, but also driven by the production set-up costs of creating a new product. Also, Calfee is an extremely high-end frame manufacturer. Some of their frames cost $4500 before you even add forks and couplings. As to Tokai’s concerns about how green bamboo as a building material is, that heating is pretty darned low-energy compared to tearing down a forest to cut a strip-mine into the ground, ripping the aluminum ore out of the ground, and heating it to thousands of degrees for hours. Farming bamboo, on the other hand, is usually creating what is essentially a fast-growing grove or forest out of grassland (I realize that bamboo is itself a grass, but as to how much carbon it pulls from the air, it is much, much more similar to trees).
February 27th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
The only problem I can think of with using bamboo is that in some places, forests are being cut down for massive bamboo plantations. All in all, it’s a pretty Earth-friendy material to use.
February 28th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Silly eco-hipsters.
Gently brush your side-swept bangs from over your eyeballs.
Look for a used or free bike.
You are only riding around on sidewalk anyway.
Or walk everywhere – without buying bourgie bamboo shoes too.
Common sense: priceless.
February 28th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
bee just pwned all of u
February 28th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I think Bee just won the Internet.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
mmmmmmmhhhh,me want to taste bee’s honey!
March 1st, 2008 at 2:17 am
things generally degenerate fast on the internet
hey joe why don’t you start a forum
March 11th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Sorry I didn’t see this before it dwindled, but I’m here to say thanks for posting this. The naysayers are correct that it’s important to know where the bamboo came from in any product we use. Still, bamboo is one of the most sustainable raw materials available. It’s up to us to demand that the bamboo in the products we buy be manufactured only from sustainable forests (and that includes NOT having displaced a virgin forest for a grass forest). It’s also up to us to demand the processes used be environmentally sound and that the workers are provided safe conditions and fair wages.
March 12th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Good points. Even though bamboo is really sustainable, it’s not worth it if it involves clearing large tracts of forest or using slave labor.
Marcus: We’re working on one AS WE SPEAK!!
March 15th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Eco-friendly bikes for the ‘average Joe’. Sure, you can buy them. But apparently you can’t build them if you’re an American.
according to an article by Fred Dreier in the Velo News Buyer’s Guide, Calfee states he hires documented Mexican workers instead of Americans. To get past the language barrier, his production managers act as interpreters. “I now rely on the current (predominantly Mexican) staff to recruit new workers.”..”We started out with American-born production workers, but we had trouble with turnover, theft, and erratic attendance”.
So much for keeping Americans at work at a living wage by
buying American. What good is accomplished by repealing NAFTA if American companies won’t even hire Americans??
March 15th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Title VII prohibits any employment decision, including recruitment, hiring, and firing or layoffs, based on national origin. I haven’t found any exemption allowing discrimination against U.S. citizens born in the United States.
March 15th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
If they had trouble with “turnover, theft, and erratic attendance” from the American workers, and the Mexican workers are doing better, then I’m fine with that (as long as they’re legal). Hire the best workers to do the job at the best price, while following the law. The free market will sort it out.
March 16th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Federal Title VII bans employers from discriminating on race, color, or national origin. Illegal discrimination occurs when an employer makes hiring or other employment decisions based on any of these issues. Therefore, employment decisions based on stereotypes or assumptions about traits or abilities of a person of a particular race or color are barred, as are employment decisions based on a person’s ancestry, birthplace or culture, linguistic characteristics, or surnames associated with a specific national origin. Even in the absence of overt examples, an employer may be proved to have discriminated if seemingly neutral policies disproportionately and negatively impact members of a specific group. I see nothing in the law that would exempt U.S. born citizens from the law’s protection. Recent changes to the Immigration and Naturalization Act extended the law’s protection to employers with more than three employees and make it CLEAR it applies to U.S. as well as non-U.S. citizens.
Making hiring decisions based on generalized assumptions about prior negative experiences with a group, in this case, U.S. citizens (i.e. ‘turnover, theft, and erratic attendance’) is discrimination based on national origin. You can screen hires carefully, but you can’t rule them out for consideration based on prior negative experience with other individuals belonging to that that group.
March 16th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I very much agree with that; people and employees should be judged on an individual basis. Like I said: Hire the best workers to do the job at the best price, while following the law. Hopefully, he doesn’t dismiss every U.S. worker just because *some* of his past U.S. workers messed up.
April 18th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
We’re getting off topic.
This bike is retarded.
Whoever made any effort to promote this should feel embarrassed, unless your the guy rolling in the dough. Not really green at all. The only thing green about this bike is so little, it’s pretty much pointless. This is like using hollow toothpicks instead of normal ones so that you could save the little bit of wood from the inside of each one. Just stupid.
As this whole “green” movement continues, it seems to be more and more of a craze, and nothing else. Like all other crazes, it’s just another marketing strategy to a new segment of the market – stupid, corny, self-satisfied yuppies with time/money to waste.
The only genuinely green thing for a person to do is to kill their self. What your bike is built with has nothing to do with the parasitism of the earth.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Demetri, your calm, level-headed argument is sure to convince lots of people. Nice job, yo
May 14th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
You can learn how to build a bike like this on instructables here. This will save those inclined to tinker some cash. Since tinkering is kind of an obligatory skill for being ecologically friendly I would recomend getting savy on it. As one poster also mentioned it would really be much more green to find and reuse a bike that was slated for the scrap heap in the first place. On a side note can everyone please stop the green pissing contest. There is a way to question the ecology of almost anything we do. If all you ever do is just shoot down peoples ideas for not being green enough you are doing more harm than good. In that case just shut up, and get out of the way while real eco minded people save your existance for you. Don’t forget to thank us when it happens.
May 15th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Shoot, I might have to look into trying to build one of those bamboo bikes. And forilla, as Jeremy said, it’s easy to criticize anything. The important thing is to keep trying and improving.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Could you write me where I can order bamboo bike, like on the picture and how much the bike is. My email: titleborn@vipmail.hu
July 9th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Mma: I’m guessing you’re in Hungary. Anyhoo, here’s where Europeans can buy bamboo bikes.
http://www.veloloco.com/contact.php
The price will probably be crazily high.
August 9th, 2008 at 11:20 am
This why I left the environmentalist movement and entered the concervationist movement. The green movement is fad movement. This is the same problem with alternative fuels stupidity, using food for fuel when the world is starving to death. This bike is no more environmentally sound than a much cheaper alluminum bike that has a frame garanteed for life. Buy one and take care of it and carefully dispose of used up componants and you have a much better solution than a bamboo bike. Use the bamboo for traditional needs since there is more need for it in building, etc.
August 9th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Greg, I can see where you’re coming from. There are a bunch of “fad” green products that a whole bunch of hipsters get to be trendy and cool. But the bamboo bikes are a good idea; bamboo is an easily renewable resource, and has a lot less embodied energy than aluminum (if you take care of an aluminum bike for a lifetime, than that is great too). Also, there are some bike-building projects now in parts of Africa where bamboo grows naturally. Using local renewable resources for transportation sounds good to me.
I do agree with you about bio-fuels; it seems that they were heavily invested in before people really thought about their repercussions. But I don’t think that you can dismiss the whole “green” movement as a fad just because of a very few examples of dumb “green” ideas.
August 17th, 2008 at 11:24 am
I grew up in the outdoors and have taken care of the woods and streams in my own back yard since I was a child and it really sucks that now I am lumped in with “green nuts” who have created some cult who cant poop in the woods (LNT) and now you are crying about bamboo which is basically a weed , it grows so fast.get over it. find something else to stand for. I think the bike is awesome!
August 17th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
yes. way to save the environment.
“The cheapest bamboo bike frame Calfee sells is about $1,700,”
I bet ya it costs $1,700 rather than $170 is cause it’s the biggest waste of time ever making it. Horrendous waste of time and inefficient. Not productive at all…hence horrible for the environment.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:43 am
I bet you it costs $1,700 because someone is willing to buy it at that price. Just like fancy $200 jeans compared to $10 jeans; both take about the same time and cost to make, but some chumps are willing to spend more to get something that’s more expensive.
February 21st, 2009 at 11:54 am
periodic pussy…
This whole mess isn’t worth one thin dime!…
March 27th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
First. To those of you who said that it would be better to just get a used bike, you haven't considered the needs of a serious cyclist. A used bike is a good choice for some to casually cruise the town or the boardwalk, but a serious bicycle enthusiast demands a little more precision than some 10 dollar flea market bike provides. These are the kinds of people who spend more than a thousand dollars on a bike. As far as how green it is, it's certainly better than mining for ore, but that's not the point. It's a cool, handmade, precision built bicycle, that looks good, is well balanced and, for those who want them, it makes people happy. That's the real point. And to the person who thinks that its not "green" because it takes longer to produce than a metal frame and thus is wasteful, I have this to say: You are very very stupid. You don't deserve for me to explain why either. You will always be stupid, and most likely die young.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:12 am
I think this one costs around $1,000 but it’s custom fit to you -not to mention that you build it yourself
http://bamboobikestudio.com/go/the-class
July 13th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Regardless of the type of bike people have, we should encourage people to get out there and ride. Plus, the prices for bamboo bikes are coming down. The folks at Panda Bicycles, http://www.ridepanda.com, in Colorado are building a great looking ride for under $900.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I am a freshy gay, is anyone interested for a quick bumb,