Hundreds of litres of PTFE lubricant go into the environment each year from bicycles.
The problem is, most street drains lead to rivers without much filtration.
Silicone, petrochemicals and PTFE are often in bike fluids, and all will eventually come off the bike.
Directly into a river mountain biking, or via a drain, it's a problem.
Learn more here.
Petrochemicals coming off your bike go into drains and from there into rivers. Petrochemical chain oil goes into your garden when you wash your bike, in the street when it rains and in local woodland when you ride in the wet.
This can cause harm to aquatic life. Petrochemicals take a long time to break down if at all.
You wouldn't pour engine oil down the drain, so why allow chain oil to go down the drain?
We use plant based ingredients.
These are fully biodegradable and don't use any animal by-products.
All our products are both 60% biodegradable within 28 days, and 100% biodegradable within 60 days.
We use a tiny amount of denatonium benzoate in our Dry Chain Wax and Agent Apple at around 10 parts per million. This molecule isn't biodegradable, but is environmentally inert and safe for human consumption. It adds a bitter taste to stop people drinking our products with plant based alcohol in.
This means these two products are 99.9999% biodegradable.
All the others are 100% biodegradable.
PTFE, is a polyflourenated chemical. PTFE is short for polytetrafluoroethylene.
A likely carcinogen is made in it's production. It is claimed, that this causes birth defects, and did so around the area where PTFE in made in the USA.
Read from the BBC on this birth defect issue here.
PTFE uses PFOA in production, a 'likely carcinogen' according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Click here for more information on this verdict.
PTFE accumulates in the food chain PTFE is NOT biodegradable. Despite this, some brands claim their PTFE lubes are biodegradable.
Click here for a Guardian piece with Greenpeace with information on the persistence in the environment of polyfluorinated chemicals like PTFE.
Click below for a BBC article on the impact of PTFE production.
We don't use PTFE.
We've formulated our products to work well without PTFE.
We don't use any other polyfluorinated chemicals.
Plastic going into the environment, and silicone are a problem today.
Plastic brush bristles wear out into the environment, so if you're using a plastic bike cleaning brush, bits of plastic might wear off.
Silicone is similar to plastic and accumulates in the environment. Numerous bike fluid companies use silicone, whilst claiming to be eco-friendly for their other products.
Silicone should not be used.
Click below for more on plastic pollution in our oceans.
We use plant based bristles on our brushes.
We don't use silicone.
Plastic production and landfill are an environmental problem we're solving. All companies should use recycled packaging to make their products. They don't, because it costs about 10% more, and unfortunately people running other companies either don't consider the environment, or they prefer money to doing the right thing.
New plastic production takes around 5% of global oil use.
New plastic has a higher carbon footprint than recycled plastic. If no company uses recycled plastic, there is less market demand, and less incentive to recycle. This
means more plastic going to landfill or being incinerated, both of which are bad for the environment.
We use recycled plastic for our 100ml and 30 ml bottle, and Eco Rider Deluxe set tubs. These take less energy to produce, and help provide a market demand for recycled plastic, which encourages councils to encourage recycling.
Climate change
Other brands use virgin plastic for their bottle packaging. This has a higher carbon footprint than recycled plastic. Most other companies don't use LED lighting or make any serious effort to reduce their carbon footprint. They see the short term only.
Climate change kills around 60,000 people a year. They're usually in poorer countries.
We care about this, and further climate change will have an impact on you soon too if not tackled.
There is a scientific consensus on climate change, and the World Health Organization is clear about the human misery and impact.
We use recycled plastic, LED lighting in our office and make a serious effort to reduce the carbon footprint of everything we do.
Air freight is mostly avoided. Use of recycled plastic means a lower carbon footprint of product production and disposal.
Using plant based ingredients means a lower carbon footprint - we're funding growth of plants which absorb CO2 from the air.
Our products are basically stored carbon dioxide from plants. And when they are used up, this goes onto the soil, biodegrades and gets
absorbed by plants. A great way of taking carbon dioxide, a climate changing gas, out of the air!
