简体中文
China's booming bike-sharing industry could generate
300,000 tonnes in scrap metal in the future – equal to the amount needed
to build five aircraft carriers, Xinhua reported on Monday.
Bike
sharing start-ups in China – thought to total 23 at present – have so
far put approximately 20 million bikes on the street, according to
Southern Weekly, a Chinese media outlet based in Guangzhou. The top two
bike-sharing companies, ofo and Mobike, contributed 2.2 million and one
million respectively to the total number of shared bikes.
Cities built for cars
Riding the dockless bikes can cost as little as half a
yuan (7.5 US cents) per hour. Many people find the service affordable
and convenient, as well as offering a healthy and
environmentally-friendly way to travel.
The
convenience, however, has triggered problems. Illegal and disruptive
parking are commonplace, as modern Chinese cities were designed with
cars rather than pedal power in mind. Bikes' flooding outside subway
stations, shopping districts and other public areas is a frequent scene
in many Chinese cities.
"From about 20 years ago, China has turned its automobile industry into a
pillar industry,” Yang Fengchun, associate professor at Peking
University, told South China Morning Post. "Therefore, you see Chinese
cities today are built for the convenience of cars. Cities are very
unfriendly for bikes.”
According to the Chinese government's database, almost
63 percent of commuters rode bicycles to work in 1980. By 2000 the
number had plummeted to 38 percent, and has dropped to less than 12
percent nowadays.
Car use, meanwhile, has escalated.
In 2010 alone, China bought 13.5 million vehicles, overtaking the US to
become the world’s largest car market.
Waste caused by low quality
The poor quality of some public shared bicycles, on top of the enormous quantity, has led to huge waste.
Online complaints about the low quality of shared cycles, and the problems these broken bikes cause, abound.
In a survey released byBeijing Municipal Bureau of
Statistics in May, over 72 percent of the participants said they had
encountered broken bicycles.Damaged cycles can be seen dumped in piles
in Beijing and many other Chinese cities.
The
recycling of scrapped bikes carries few benefits, and recycling
businesses simply do not want to buy the cycles from bike sharing
businesses, according to Southern Weekly.
Solutions
Public shared bikes
were designed to be environmentally-friendly substitutes for cars,
against pollution in China. But the lack of disposal options when they
are no longer fit for purpose make them a threat.
Some bike sharing businesses have hired mechanics and set up repair stations, but these are rare and hard to find.
Chinese
environmental science-focused website Feijiu reported that experts
suggest businesses upgrade the quality of bicycles to reduce waste, and
have also urged the government to set up recycling systems for bicycles.
