Crownring In The Environment
One of the greatest concerns of protecting the environment is cost. Electric cars look really good if you leave out the cost of resources, battery manufacture, transport, import, and at the other end when the car is used up there is battery recycling, battery waste storage, and toxic material management.
When I say cost I don't mean dollars. I mean cost to the environment. Nearly every advance we have to benefit the environment comes with a price to that environment reducing the net advantage. Things like solar panels, wind turbines, and nuclear power plants are additions to the weight of the environmental effort. They are their own industries, each with their cost to resources and energy.
Crownring has no such weight. It is not an addition but a replacement. It takes no more from the environment than what is already in place. Crownring will simply slide into the space where chainrings currently occupy. A tweak to the CNC pattern and we are in business. No additions from materials, power consumption, shipping, or any adverse side effect. It replaces. It does not add any weight.
In the world there are an estimated one billion bicycles. According to reported statistics analysis there are as many bicycles as there are passenger cars. A fun fact, the Netherlands reportedly has a population of 17 million people and a bicycle count of 23 million.
Bicycle usage could reduce carbon emissions to a greater extent than electric vehicles, if everyone could ride safely. Environmentally friendly countries like Sweden and Finland have invested in bicycle adaptive transportation. While it is expensive to change a hundred years of automobile adaptation there are benefits. It is less expensive to build parking for a thousand bicycles than it is to build a parking garage for a thousand cars. Bicycle lanes don't need the substructure that is required for city streets. It is a logical fact that building for bicycles is more cost effective than building for cars. There would be more bicycling if cities provided for safe and convenient cycling. That would mean less money going toward car traffic.
A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 82% of daily trips in the US are accomplished by cars, half of which are single-occupant. About half of all travel trips are three miles or less. Well within range of a bicycle. If cities would invest in bicycle infrastructure there would be a significant rise in bicycle trips that would replace single occupancy car trips.
Consider health. We are all concerned about carbon monoxide concentrations in our cities. One of the setbacks of bicycling is a bicyclist will inhale more pollutants than a driver, but despite that, bicycling still provides a healthier benefit than driving. But did you know there is another automobile related pollution that you never hear about? Tire dust. Approximately 3 billion new tires are sold every year. The dust from worn treads is by some studies claimed to be as much as six million metric tons per year worldwide. Of that, one million tons is washed to sea. Electric vehicles, because of their increased weight, contribute 20% more tire dust than cars with combustion engines. They trade an obvious pollution for a not so obvious one—one that no one mentions.
Bicycles will reduce tire dust as well as emissions. Crownring will reduce bicyclers' travel times and effort thereby making Crownring a healthy advantage even over a standard bicycle.
Crownring can make every bicycle easier and faster. That goes a long way toward encouraging more people to ride bicycles for transportation and not just for recreation. There is no downside to Crownring. It is not just an evolution of bicycles, it is a paradigm shift.
Jill Warren, CEO of the European Cyclists’ Federation stated, “There is no conceivable way to achieve the CO2 emission cuts needed by 2030 without significantly more cycling in as many cities and countries as possible. Investing in safe cycling infrastructure and in enabling citizens to make more of their daily trips by bicycle is, as the latest IPCC report attests, one of the best things governments can do to mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis.”
Text updated August 13, 2025
