Bicycle is a green way to travel, no doubt here. But how green can you really travel by bike?
I took 4 main aspects of any trip – transportation, eating, sleeping and entertainment.
Starting with the most easy one – transportation. Here bicycle definitely wins compared to cars, trains, ships and airplanes. There is no fuel to be used and no emissions either. It can only lose to walking and perhaps paragliding but none of them are a widespread alternative for long trips.
Bicycle has a perfect speed – it both lets you enjoy the views, smell the flowers and talk to people, and it can also make a decent amount of km a day. I believe most bicycle tourers do 80-100km a day on the average.
But, back to the ‘greenness’ of bike touring.
Eating. Although it’s possible to eat in restaurants while on a bike tour, most cyclists end up buying local produce on the roadside or in a village shop and cook their food themselves. Other times you get invited into peoples house and share their homemade meals. Most often it’s probably a mix of everything but in essence a bike tourer is more inclined to buy local produce, contribute to a small village economy and not to waste any food!
One downside, however, to food shopping are the omnipresent plastic bags. And we shared this concern with many other travellers. No matter how hard you try to convince the shopkeeper that you don’t need that one apple to be put into a plastic bag, once in a while you will meet a stubborn person who will enforce that bag into your hands…but just keep trying 🙂
Local apples in Wachau, Austria 
Market in Chișinău, Moldova 
It was the strawberry season 🙂
Next one is sleeping. At home I have a habit to stay up late, and therefore burn electricity. While camping, I would most often go to sleep with the sun and wake up with the sun, or otherwise use a small flashlight – charged from the solar panel – to read a book. Perhaps a small win, but still.
And the last aspect is the entertainment that we usually look for when on a trip. Be it eating in a fancy restaurant where half of the plate comes from another continent or taking a boat trip polluting local sea or lake waters, all of these becomes of a little interest when bike touring.
And I believe that there are a few factors that contribute to this, at least in my case. Firstly, cycling rewards me with so many impressions and emotions that I hardly ever think of anything extra to add to it. Secondly, many bike tourers avoid big cities and prefer small and quiet countryside where little such entertainment exists in the first place. And lastly, why not, a tourer is usually on a tight budget and would stick to more simple experiences in the nature like hiking or swimming in a lake.
To sum it up, bike touring brings us a more natural lifestyle where we buy only what we need, don’t waste food, reuse what we can, and do no (or minimal) harm to the environment, and in the meantime we live happier and healthier than ever!