How do Brits like to be green, and what green behaviors do they still avoid?

That’s what a new survey by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) is showing us by examining the environmental actions and preferences of 100,000 British people from 40,000 households.

The findings presented below are the first from a new annual household survey in Britain named Understanding Society. The environmental topics are one subset of the whole survey, which also examines the “working lives, relationships, health, finances, neighbourhoods, education, transport and more” of Brits.

What are the main findings thus far?

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Home of the upcoming climate change conference, Copenhagen is #4 in this great bicycle city photo tour series. With about 55% of trips being by bicycle, Copenhagen is an amazing place to visit or live if you like bicycling.

The photos to follow give you a taste of this great bicycle city. From dogs on bikes to bikes on bikes, from bikes in ice to bike counters, enjoy these great bicycle photos.

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From bicycle lovers to lovers on bikes, bike art to art on bikes, the largest bicycle sharing program in the world to some of the smallest bikers, enjoy this bicycle city photo tour of Paris, France!

Paris doesn’t have a long history as one of the best bicycle cities, but with the introduction of the largest bicycle sharing program in the world, bicycling in Paris has boomed and the city is becoming commonly associated with the bicycle now. Its whole culture is changing due to the bicycle’s increasing relevance in the city’s daily life.

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Groningen would be number one on this list if we were looking at percentage of residents who bicycle for transportation purposes. About 57% of travel in Groningen is by bicycle!

The city has been named the world’s best bicycle city a couple of times (1993 and 2006). It is a university city which is part of the reason why it has so many people bicycling, but it has done amazing things to make the city more bicycle friendly as well. The bicycle facilities you can see on the following pages will probably blow your mind away.

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, this series of photo tours is going to be worth about a hundred thousand.

You have probably heard before that the cities on this list are great bicycle cities, but the following photo tours will give you a better and more entertaining visual explanation of why they are considered to be so great.

From public art to art on bikes, seas of bicycles to bicycles that could carry a swimming pool, high heels to naked bicyclists, check out these upcoming photo tours of some of the world’s greatest bicycle cities.

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The competition has weekly winners and a grand prize winner.

Five Beat Gasoline campaign videos are here:

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Like millions of Americans, we’re celebrating July 4th, Independence Day.

However, we’re celebrating this national holiday by focusing on the many aspects of our life that, in various ways, have led us to quite a different vision for a sustainable tomorrow – complete with local, renewable energy and lots of delicious meals harvested within ten miles of where we live – if not from our own kitchen garden.  Sometimes we even celebrate July 4th with a rainbow.

Here’s how our Independence Day is different — and yours can be too:

•  Be energy independent by generating all our power with renewable energy systems.
For a vast portion of the United States, there is enough solar and wind energy to completely meet our needs right where we live.  True, adopting renewable energy will require an investment either personally or for your business if you work from home.  But with present Federal tax credits and many state incentives, the time couldn’t be better.  We completely power our Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast and Farm with solar electric and wind turbine systems.  In fact, we overproduce renewable energy to the tune of about 4,000 kWhs (kilowatt hours) a year.  We share the surplus with our neighbors.

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The Great American Cleanup begins today with a national launch event in Waveland, Miss., which will help  restore a hurricane-ravaged town along the Gulf Coast. It will continue through May 31 with additional national events being held in New York City on Earth Day and Nashville on May 14.

Millions of volunteers will work to rid streets, waterways and public spaces of litter and illegal dumpsites.  Communities will green up parks, schoolyards and other public spaces and hold recycling drives and educational events.

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Ecologic Designs’ story starts like this:  “There is always talk about a killer set of waves and dolphins playing in the surf, an epic afternoon rolling across warm red rocks on your bike, or a hike in fresh powder on a full moon snowshoe trek. There is also talk about a beach polluted by sludge or surfing next to trash, trails that all of a sudden become strip malls, or the snow trip sans snow because of global warming.” It’s this kind of understanding that guides Ecologic Design, through their two brands Green Guru Gear and Green Goddess, to craft products and fashions in Boulder, Colorado, that have a positive environmental and social impact, while raising ecological awareness.

Take Green Guru’s Blow Out series bi-fold wallet, for example.  The company uses reclaimed bike inner tubes to create a stylish and waterproof exterior. Every item in their Blow Out series is made from 98% reclaimed and recycled content by weight.  Each wallet features a six card and two bill compartments.  The ultimate in a locally-based enterprise, drawing from a readily available waste stream, Green Guru’s butyl rubber comes from Reclamation Stations within about eighteen miles from there they’re manufactured. Green Guru Pouches, Chalk Bags and Messenger Bags are also made from the upcycled inner tubes.

Since spring of 2007, Ecologic Designs has been an ecopreneurial trailblazer, creating viable and sustainable enterprises by harvesting the waste stream, often referred to as “upcycling”: the practice of recycling or repurposing items destined for the landfill and transforming them into something of further use and value. Upcycling was coined by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, authors of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.  The butyl rubber, also called vulcanized rubber, is not cost-effective and very difficult to recycle; therefore these inner tubes usually end up in local landfills where they won’t degrade for many years.  Unfortunately, tires and inner tubes account for over 50% of the rubber produced each year.

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Stimulus Bike says it wants to see economic stimulus funds work to promote cycling, something that could save us money over the long term (less gas money, fewer car repairs, etc.) and promote a healthier, more sustainable way of getting from here to there.

Now, under President Barack Obama’s currently proposed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the average citizen isn’t expecting to see a check in the mail a la last year’s economic boost effort (which didn’t work anyway). However, it’s possible you could benefit from reduced tax withholding in your paycheck. Stimulus Bike would like to see you invest those dollars in a two-wheeler of some kind:

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The police officer who seemingly randomly picked a bicyclist out of a critical mass crowd to tackle has been indicted for falsifying records and could also soon be charged with misdemeanor assault. The YouTube video [below], which went viral soon after the incident, was instrumental in the indictment.

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Via:  New York Times

Image: University of New England

Beautiful Off-Road Bike Paths & Great Bicycle Signage

Image Credit 1: knallaerbse via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: freddy via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 3: nchenga via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Arts & Crafts Bikes

Image Credit 1: Jope 1978 via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: missdarling via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 3: alicetiara via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Great Bike Parking of All Sorts

To a secure bike center under the train station with attendants where you can also buy or rent a bike, visit a full-service bike shop, go to one of several available cafes, or get bikes maps and information:

Image Credit 1: Julikeishon en Basel via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: Climens via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 3: kbrookes via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 4: Márcio Cabral de Moura via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 5: acezz3000 via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 6: kbrookes via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 7: freddy via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Weather-Protected, Artistic Bike Seats

Image Credit: JackVinson via flickr under a Creative Commons license

The program, called “SmartBiking,” encourages bikers to interact in novel ways including through a Facebook app called “I crossed your path.”

According to Christine Outram, the principal research assistant on the project, the Facebook app creates a “social network for cyclists, allowing them to link up with people they may have ridden past during the day and potentially establish new connections.”

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Perhaps smarting over a judge’s recent decision to scratch the Bush administration’s plan to allow snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, now Bush has said, “Damn it! If I can’t snowmobile in Yellowstone, at least I want to go mountain biking!”

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The driver?  New York State Senator Jeff Klein.

So you’re telling me you’re not going to vote for dedicated bike lanes, huh?

Read Beavan’s letter to Klein here.

Beautiful Off-Road Bike Paths & Great Bicycle Signage

Image Credit 1: knallaerbse via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: freddy via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 3: nchenga via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Arts & Crafts Bikes

Image Credit 1: Jope 1978 via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: missdarling via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 3: alicetiara via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Great Bike Parking of All Sorts

To a secure bike center under the train station with attendants where you can also buy or rent a bike, visit a full-service bike shop, go to one of several available cafes, or get bikes maps and information:

Image Credit 1: Julikeishon en Basel via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: Climens via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 3: kbrookes via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 4: Márcio Cabral de Moura via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 5: acezz3000 via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 6: kbrookes via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 7: freddy via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Weather-Protected, Artistic Bike Seats

Image Credit: JackVinson via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Starting last May, UW-Madison police started locating the GPS-equipped bikes in places where previous bike thefts have occurred. When one of those bikes starts moving, cops know they’ve got a likely thief on the move. They can follow the bike’s movements on their computers, then dispatch officers to the scene to catch the culprit.

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If you live in New York City, London, Paris, or on Mackinac Island, and you either have access to a great subway system or cars are banned from your small island, going for 24 hours without driving is not a big deal.  But here in Chicagoland, despite a decent public transportation system, driving is a way of life.  So I decided to spend a day without getting into my car or any other car, and see how I would fare.

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Image credit: AndrejJ at Wikimedia Commons

Beautiful Off-Road Bike Paths & Great Bicycle Signage

Image Credit 1: knallaerbse via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: freddy via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 3: nchenga via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Arts & Crafts Bikes

Image Credit 1: Jope 1978 via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: missdarling via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 3: alicetiara via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Great Bike Parking of All Sorts

To a secure bike center under the train station with attendants where you can also buy or rent a bike, visit a full-service bike shop, go to one of several available cafes, or get bikes maps and information:

Image Credit 1: Julikeishon en Basel via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: Climens via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 3: kbrookes via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 4: Márcio Cabral de Moura via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 5: acezz3000 via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 6: kbrookes via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 7: freddy via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Weather-Protected, Artistic Bike Seats

Image Credit: JackVinson via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Recently retired and now living in a suburb of St. Louis, we knew he’d never take to biking as there were a number of screw-this(!) sized hills all throughout his town. Through ten years of teaching I know that adults are far less resilient than children and often times need but one excuse to say “screw this” and go back , in this case, to a steady diet of TV watching. But we were elated to see how much he enjoyed his juiced up Electra Townie! Whether it’s riding with my mom (another proud new owner of an electric bike–she had to keep up), biking to the store for groceries, or putting it on the bike rack and hitting the Katy Trail, few days go by that he’s not on his electric bike.

This began my love affair with electric bikes.

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The question of whether to walk, bike or take public transportation is a no-brainer if you live in a city like New York, where driving can often be more of a pain than a pleasure. But what about the rest of the country? Not every community is large enough or dense enough to offer the auto alternatives the Big Apple does. And what about people who live in rural areas where everything is a half-hour’s drive away or more? Can we refashion our country’s way of getting around to be more European? Or are those of us in unwalkable communities doomed to either move elsewhere or live like so many billions do in the rest of the world, consigned to life in a radius of space measured in only a few miles?

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