Can you imagine that all Eurobike visitors would switch to bikes for the last five kilometers of their trip in Frankfurt? And do you know what that means?
107.35t of CO2 and 9.12kg of microplastics as well as €529,285.19 would be saved! How do we know? We calculated that. How? We show you here:
The organisers are expecting around 100,000 visitors over the five days of the fair. That's 20,000 a day. The average travel distance per person is 5km, i.e. 10km a day. According to the Umweltbundesamt (German Federal Environment Agency), an average of 1.4 people travel together in one car. That would be 14,285 cars per day.
How much CO2 emissions would that mean?
In total, these 14,285 cars would cover 142,850km per day just for the daily 10km journey to and from Eurobike.
If you now take into account the average CO2 emissions of a mid-size car of 150.33 g/km (we calculated this average value for three representative mid-size cars based on WLPT/ADAC data), you end up with daily CO2 emissions of 21.47t. For all five days of the fair together, that would be a total of 107.35t CO2.
This corresponds to the weight of 7 female sperm whales (one weighs around 15t)! Imagine that…
So if everyone traveled by bike, CO2 emissions equivalent to 7 female sperm whales could be avoided, because a bike does not cause any CO2 emissions!
What would our calculation mean for the release of microplastics?
We are again making the same assumptions for arrival by car as in the CO2 calculation. You have to know that car tire abrasion of around 0.12 g occurs over one kilometer. That doesn't sound like much at first. But if we extrapolate that to all 14,285 cars and the 142,850 kilometers driven per day, there is a total of 17.14 kg of wear per day. That's a total of 85.71kg over the five days of the fair.
Now you think that bike tires produce microplastics through Abrasion,too? That's true, but much less! Because the abrasion of a bike over a distance of one kilometer is only 0.00923g. We also extrapolated that analogously. If all visitors came by bike, there would be a daily abrasion of 1.32kg per day and thus 6.59kg on all days of the fair in total.
The car therefore causes much more tire wear than the bicycle – namely: 79.12 kg more. The way of calculation: 85.71kg – 6.59kg = 79.12kg
Imagine if everyone could save the plastic amount of 2,260 yoghurt pots by traveling by bike! This would primarily benefit our seas! And make the sperm whales happy again.
And how much money could be saved if everyone traveled by bike?
Again, we made the same assumptions as above. But whoever uses the car must not only calculate the costs for fuel, but also have to take into account the costs of acquisition, depreciation, insurance, etc. Again, we determined an average value for this. The basis here is also data coming from ADAC. So we came up with costs of 76.10 cents per kilometer.
If you add up these costs for the total number of kilometers driven over the five days of the fair, the result is €543,570.89.
Traveling by car on all five days of the fair costs €543,570.89 for all visitors.
But of course, getting there by bike is not entirely free.
According to the Umweltbundesamt (German Federal Environment Agency), using a bicycle costs 10 cents per kilometer. Here, too, expenses for spare parts and acquisition are taken into account. If we now convert these costs to the total kilometers driven, we get costs for the journey by bike of €14,285.70. A significantly lower value than the one for arriving by car.
If we now compare the costs, a total of €529,285.19 remains in savings. If all visitors switched from cars to bikes to go to Eurobike, €529,285.19 could be saved.
And to give you a better idea, we have also made a comparison for this:
According to Statista, a visit to the movies cost €8.87 last year. So if you were to allocate the cost of traveling by car to cinema visits, that would correspond to 59,671 cinema visits.
Do you want to be part of the mobility transition? Then SteigUm (switch over) and come to Eurobike by bike!
