Reduced Impact Statement
Updated December 2023
I have updated this page to be a "Reduced Impact Statement" as it's become clear to me that it's not possible to run any business that makes things completely sustainably. Following Patagonia's example, we will strive to reduce our impact and improve how we do things, but we also have to acknowledge that a huge amount of the parts we sell are from suppliers over whom we have no influence on the impact of what they're doing. So we can never be truly sustainable. All we can do is continue to improve the things we can make positive changes to, and hope to influence others by example.
Cy Turner, Founder and Director
Here at Cotic we are always aiming to have a lower environmental impact on our world, whilst having a higher positive impact on our customers, staff, suppliers and anyone else who we come into contact with. A lot of what we do towards having lower environmental impact wasn't a conscious decision to be "greener" on our part. Most of it grew out of simply wanting to run efficiently, with the least waste and best use of our time at work. To look after our people and have a great place to work. A good example is our ability to be flexible in our approach and give our customers options on their builds, including using their own parts if they send them in; the last thing we want is people getting perfectly good bits they don't want and won't use.
Turns out if you apply these principles over a long period of time you end up with a fairly low environmental impact business. But we're not done! We will keep trying to be better and keep looking for other ways we can improve. That being the case, if you like what you see on this list, but think there's something else we could be doing, let us know. Drop us an email and tell us. And on the flip side of that, have a read of all these things we already do, and see if some could apply where you work. A lot of it seems trivial, but a lot of little things will add up.
It's not just about having a lower environmental impact on our planet either. It's about having a more positive impact on people and society; being more inclusive, getting more people excited about cycling and enjoying nature, and looking after the natural world. It's about giving back to the people who help make our sport and our world a better place. It's about making sure our staff and suppliers are happy, well paid and well looked after. You spend a lot of time at work, so it should be as enjoyable as possible. It's about all that and more. The only thing unsustainably high should be the amount of stoke about bikes, and if you have no idea what we're talking about, click here.
Here is a list of things Cotic do right now that make our business lower environmental impact:
Environmental
- Minimise Use of High Carbon Emission Materials:
- Your Bike Built For You: Post us parts you already own for assembly onto your new frame, or delete parts from the build you won't use/need to save on waste
- Each bike assembled to order in the UK: No inefficient shipping of fixed spec bikes from assemblers overseas, and every customer gets the exact spec they want
- Reusing packaging: zip ties, bags, bubble wrap, boxes from all sources
- Ocean shipping where possible: Whilst not perfect, it's the most carbon efficient long distance shipping mode at the moment
- Changing waste management supplier for better recycling
- Futureproofing design: Use frame interface standards that we expect to be long lasting with wide parts availability
- Standard fittings where possible
- Few propriety parts (forward and backward compatible)
- Build in durability: One of the main reasons we use steel
- Spare parts available for legacy bikes: We have stock of spares going back over 10 years
- Green energy supplier: We are limited in what we can do in our current premises in terms of efficiency (like insulation) and energy generation (like solar on the roof), so the best we can do right now is to buy our electricity from a supplier that only sources renewable energy
- UK prototyping
- Some model lines manufactured in the UK, minimising shipping
- Recycling frames on site
- All cardboard packaging locally sourced
- Paper parcel tape
- Information printed on recycled paper
- Hand delivering bikes / parts where possible
- Recycled clothing / uniforms
- Biodegradable waterbottles and carbon neutral drinkwear
- Promote reuse / donation of old frames
- Donate parts to local bike charity
- Try to commute by bike as often as possible
- Only use eco-friendly bike cleaners / tyre sealant
- Tyre recycling (velorim)
- Vehicle policy: There is currently one vehicle owned by Cotic, which is a diesel van equipped with the latest Euro6 compliant engine. It was purchased in 2016, and rather than trading in for new at the end of the lease in 2020, we bought it. We believe using vehicles for longer is better for the planet than constantly getting new every 3 years. Should an EV van become available that will meet our requirements, we will look at that carefully, but for now we will be using our existing van. If we need to purchase another vehicle, we commit to buying the lowest impact vehicle we can that can meet our usage requirements.
We use steel for our bikes for performance reasons, but it's also the lowest environment impact material you can use for a bicycle. According to the Trek Sustainability Report their carbon fibre bike frames and components emit approximately 3 times as much CO2 as their aluminium equivalents. On average aluminium emits 11.7 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of material produced, whereas steel on average produces 2 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of material produced. Even best case for aluminium using the Alcoa product fuelled by mostly renewable electricity, this aluminium produces 2.5 tonnes of CO2 per tonne. Then there is the energy involved in heat treating aluminium post welding, which steel doesn't need.
Our main material supplier - Reynolds Technology - have done their own environmental impact study, and found that steel is the lowest impact material you can make a bike frame out of. You can read full details on their website. It's worth noting that by cross referencing the Reynolds and Trek work, titanium and stainless steel have about the same CO2 impact as carbon fibre, which makes them really quite poor from an environmental standpoint.
Interestingly, they found the biggest contribution to their carbon footprint was having to airfreight tubes from Birmingham, UK, to vendors mostly in the Far East. With that in mind, we are aiming to onshore more of our manufacturing in order to reduce this element of our impact on the environment.
Whilst we don't have the resources to do research to the extent of the fantastic Trek piece of work, we are confident in saying that steel is the lowest environmental impact material we can use and still meet our performance and durability targets.
Full disclosure: We use aluminium for the swingarms, links, pivots and shock mounts on droplink bikes, and we offer the Escapade with carbon fibre forks. There will never be a Cotic carbon frame. In light of the Reynolds and Trek work, we will never produce a titanium frame again, or do anything in stainless steel due to their high environmental cost.
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