According to Cannondale, pro cycling teams go through more than half a million plastic water bottles per year, many of them only used once before getting cast to the side of the road during a race. While some become souvenirs, many head to the landfill for pretty much ever.
These new 100% compostable water bottles aim to alleviate that by replacing the traditional plastic bidon with one that’ll eliminate approximately 630,000 bottles from going to the dump. They say 70,000 of those are used in the Grand Tour alone, and that 34,000 bottles are used in a season by EF Education – EasyPost/TIBCO men’s and women’s teams.
It’s derived from plant-based materials, with the entire bottle, cap, and bite valve all being completely compostable. And, it’s free from plasticizers, heavy metals, and BPAs, so it’s good for us humans, too.
According to Cannondale, it will “decompose in as quickly as 3 months, in an industrial compost system once exposed to micro-organisms, heat and humidity. This is certified by European Compost Standards EN13242. At home, this will be approximately 10 – 12 months due to the variability in home compost systems.”
Initially the bottle will be used by their World Tour teams, then opened up for the entire World Tour for the 2023 season and beyond. While there are no immediate plans for selling them to the public, we’d certainly like to see that option sooner than later.
Mike will never see this with Israel Start Up…
Always nice to move away from plastics, but its a wasteful practice regardless.
This is cool but the bottles still won’t compost on the side of the road…
Same thing I was thinking, green washing. It is probably also three times the price. But at least they are trying to get away from petroleum based plastics.
Simple solution, just impose a rule that riders can’t those away water bottles.
Even using compostable bottles it’s a wasteful practice to throw away 500,000 bottles a year.
Make it a 1 second penalty for every lost water bottle and see what happens. But that doesn’t help while they are training.
Cool idea, not sure it’s very practical for consumer use. It looks like these bottle are pretty flimsy which is great for WT Teams since they’re single use and will likely be safer for the peloton to run over. My personal bottles I prefer a more robust construction that can be used for many years. I usually rotate them to race bottles (for races with bottle throw feed zones) after several years of use.