How biking saves the enviorment
By: Logan Williams, Brandon Wiesinger and Drew Redman
Pollution
Pollution is very harmful to you and the environment but not a lot of people know how much it damage is causes and that everyone who chooses to walk or bike greatly reduces pollution. To show you how much you can help I’m going to use Byron Nelson High School as an example. There are about 2,500 students that attend Byron and about half of them drive their cars to school. This means that about 1,250 people drive to school and back for 180 days out of the year. According to one of our sources a small car emits 8,725 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. Using these number you can figure out that 1 student will emit 4302.73 pounds of CO2 and all the students will release 5378424 pounds of CO2 into the air in one year just by driving to school and back. So during their whole 4 year at high school approximately 21513696 pounds of CO2 will be released into the air. We also have to take into consideration that these number are based on a small car and a lot of people at the school drive trucks which can release up to two times as much as the small car and that people have to drive to other places like sports practice or to restaurants so in reality the number is much greater. Cars also release 2 other harmful chemicals but in smaller amounts compared to CO2.
Why you should bike
Biking makes you healthier. It betters your mental and physical health by getting you outside, breathing in fresh air, and exercising which makes you stronger by increasing your muscle mass. Biking is also good for your heart because it improves your cardiovascular fitness which reduces the chance of getting heart disease. Another great reason why you should bike is because it saves you a lot of money. A bike extremely cheap compared to buying a car, it also takes a lot less maintenance. You also won’t have to pay for gas or insurance. In total you can save around 15,000$ a year depending on what car you buy and how much you spend on gas, insurance and repairs.
How pollution affects you
Pollution puts you at a higher risk to get asthma or other respiratory issues like lung cancer. The toxic chemicals that are released through pollution include hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide. All of these chemicals attack your immune, endocrine, and reproductive system. These chemicals are especially dangerous for fetuses, newborn babies and people with chronic diseases. Pollution also get into the water which plants and animals drink the water which causes significant damage to their reproductive and nervous systems. When we eat the plants and animals that are contaminated we intake even more pollution which puts us at higher risk of infection and harm to our bodies.
Our Plan
Our Main goal is to increase the amount of people that ride bikes this will help reduce air pollution. Mobilizing people to ride bikes will be achieved by getting sponsors to give out incentives, like coupons to their restaurant or store. These will be given to people who ride there bike for a certain amount of miles per their age per month. We will track how much they ride there bike by handing our Rotation tracker which tracks how many times the wheel rotates which can be converted into miles. Once they have reached a certain amount of miles they can go into our sponsored restaurant or store and show their tracker to the sponsor. Once the sponsor checks the tracker and that the miles are sufficient for the participants age group, the participant will receive a coupon to that store. The trackers will be available in the counselor’s office for students and at the Roanoke public library for citizens wanting to participate. There will also be flyers at sponsor’s locations and in the school that have all the information about the program.