Environmental Impact of e-Scooters, Q&A With EarthTalk

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What’s the environmental impact of these dockless e-scooters I see all over town now?
—Jim M. Salisbury, CT

By now, you’ve certainly seen dockless e-scooters in your town or somewhere nearby. Some 85,000 of these electric-powered, phone-unlockable mini-vehicles crowd the streets and sidewalks of 100 different metro areas across the U.S. In 2018 they surpassed dockless e-bikes as the most common app-rentable transport option nationwide, with riders taking them on some 38.5 million trips.

A recent lifecycle analysis found that bicycling, walking and buses are all “greener” modes of transport than dockless e-scooters…but are they as fun? Credit: Brett Sayles, Pexels.
A recent lifecycle analysis found that bicycling, walking and buses are all “greener” modes of transport than dockless e-scooters…but are they as fun? Credit: Brett Sayles, Pexels.

These e-scooters are often marketed as “green” or “carbon-neutral” because they run off electric batteries instead of fossil fuels, but consumers shouldn’t think they’re getting a completely guilt-free ride. A recent lifecycle analysis from North Carolina State University assessing the “cradle-to-grave” environmental impact of e-scooters found that bicycling, walking and buses are all “greener” ways to get around.

A rider hopping on an e-scooter doesn’t necessarily think about the carbon emissions and other impacts involved with manufacturing, transporting and maintaining these otherwise low-impact electric vehicles. “If you only think about the segment of the life cycle you can see, which would be standing on the e-scooter where there’s no tailpipe, it’s easy to make that assumption,” says Jeremiah Johnson, an NC State professor and study co-author. “But if you take a step back, you can see all the other things that are a bit hidden in the process.”

While relatively light and small, e-scooters must carry a battery in addition to their basic frame and electronic systems. Producing these batteries takes a heavy toll on the environment, although no worse than similar types of batteries used in e-bikes and even electric cars. Besides the batteries, the aluminum used to create the e-scooters’ frames and the rubber for their tires add to their environmental footprint.

The NC State researchers found that about half of an e-scooter’s carbon footprint is created during production, while most of the rest (43 percent) comes from collecting and recharging them every night. In general, e-scooters are charged by freelance workers known as “juicers.” At the end of each day, they take e-scooters off the street and typically charge them up at home via their own power outlets (likely not from renewable sources). Furthermore, the majority of juicers pick up e-scooters in gas-powered cars or trucks. The upshot is that the common charging process is a long way from being carbon neutral.

That said, e-scooters are currently about twice as efficient as the average car in per passenger miles per gallon (in this case CO2 units emitted per passenger carried a distance of one mile). However, a car carrying more than one passenger can reach the same or even better levels of efficiency as an e-scooter. Buses, when fully loaded, easily beat e-scooters in per passenger efficiency, while bicycles easily beat buses.

Of course, e-scooters are sure to become more efficient in the future as both the production and pick-up processes get greener. As a consumer, you can improve the situation by using e-scooters to replace car trips, but bikes or buses are still a better choice as far as the planet is concerned.

CONTACT: “Are E-Scooters Polluters? The Environmental Impacts of Shared Dockless Electric Scooters”.

EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk. Send questions to: question@earthtalk.org.

Turning Plastic Into Robes

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Buddhist monks in Thailand are recycling plastic bottles into robes. Thailand is a major contributor to plastic pollution. Thailand along with China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka generate up to 60% of plastic pollution in oceans. At the Wat Chak Daeng Buddhist temple located south of Bangkok, the abbot Phra Maha Pranom Dhammalangkaro is spearheading a project to recycle plastic bottles into the fabric for colored robes for monks.

“Don’t think that the waste problem can’t be solved. Buddha taught us that there is always a solution to every problem.”

—Phra Maha Pranom Dhammalangkaro, Deputy Abbot of the Wat Chak Daeng Temple

Examing Tree Rings, Fire-Scars, and History to Predict Future Fires

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In this video by The YEARS Project, leading ecologist Tom Swetnam sheds light on future fires by looking into the past. Swetnam uses dendrochronology, the use of tree rings to reconstruct and evaluate variations in past and present environments, to study the natural and cultural disturbances of forest ecosystems.

Tree rings are like time capsules. Each ring tells the story of a year in the tree’s life.

“Very small, narrow ring –drought year.
Big fat, thick ring –wet year.”

–Tom Swetnam

Tom examines tree rings along with scars in fire-scarred trees to learn how fires have responded to climate changes in the past. Once Tom knows how climate affected trees in the past, he can then extrapolate how the environment will affect future fires.

“We began to see these really large high-severity fires beginning in the ’70s and ’80s–fires that were like more than 10,000, more than 20,000 acres. Then suddenly, in the late ’80s, we started seeing fires routinely in that size range. And then, since the droughts of 2000, 100,000-acre fires, 400,000-acre fires. Just last year, 500,000-acre fire.”

–Tom Swetnam

Swetnam discovered the following:
•Fires in the American West are now six times more destructive than they were just forty years ago
•Fire season is now nearly four months longer than it used to be.
•Some of today’s fires burn so hotly that they destroy the soil, preventing trees from growing back for thousands of years.

“The smoking gun is basically there. It’s getting hotter, getting dryer, and the fires are going right up along with that.”

–Tom Swetnam

Trees store vast amounts of carbon. When trees burn, the stored carbon releases into the atmosphere and further warms the climate. The warmer the climate, the higher the chance for monster fires.

“This is outside of the norm. To burn every living tree for five miles around. This is catastrophic. We’re starting to see fire behaving in ways that nobody has ever seen before. From our knowledge, with tree ring records and old historic photographs and old pioneer accounts, in these landscapes there’s just no evidence of huge fires burning big holes like that in these places anytime.”

“I really doubt that this place is coming back to forest for many, many, many lifetimes. So, if this continues for the next 20, 30, 50 years, probably could lose 50 percent of our forests.”

“And when we know that we have been the cause of this or at least a large part of the cause of this, then the responsibility, the feeling of responsibility, is even greater to do something.”

–Tom Swetnam