Are electric scooters actually good for the environment?

In cities across North America and Europe, fleets of electric scooters have appeared seemingly overnight. These scooters offer a new and quick mode of urban transportation, but are they beneficial to the environment? Electric scooters have no direct emissions of greenhouse gases or other air pollutants that are emitted by gasoline-powered cars.

Bird, one of several scooter rental companies, have branded themselves as champions of a new generation of sustainable transportation. According to the US Department of Energy, 60% of vehicle trips are less than 6 miles, and most of those are made by cars. Bird claims that their scooters will provide an alternative to cars for these short trips, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions and benefiting the environment.

The benefits of electric scooters are not only environmental, but could be social as well. A cheap and easy-to-use transportation service could be valuable to low-income areas. Scooters could help improve the connectivity of neighborhoods that are not serviced by public transportation, as well as families who might not be able to afford a car. In general, providing a new option for transportation will increase the diversity of people who have access to transportation.

In terms of potential downsides, electric scooters may not directly produce any pollutants, that they are not 100% environmentally friendly. Scooters are manufactured en masse in China using aluminum alloys and other metals, lithium-ion batteries, and plastics. They must then be transported on freight ships running on fossil fuels to cities all over the world, resulting in a large net increase in fossil fuel consumption.

The emissions associated with electric scooters don’t stop there; an electric vehicle is only as clean as the energy grid it is charged from, and most energy grids in the United States are still reliant on coal or natural gas. And on the topic of charging, how are electric scooters charged? Bird scooters are picked up by cars and trucks and brought to a “nest” - a warehouse where they are charged. Lime scooters are charged by “juicers” who drive around and charge scooters on the street. These emissions must also be considered when evaluating the impact of electric scooters on the environment.

Scooters are also manufactured with a life expectancy of 2 years. The fad of rental bikes has already resulted in piles of discarded bikes in Chinese scrapyards. Will scooters suffer the same fate? Many scooters do not fulfill their two-year lifespan and are instead vandalized and destroyed on the streets, as showcased on the Bird Graveyard Instagram page.

Electric scooters, despite their flaws, could be a viable option for transportation in the future, and are probably better for the environment than cars when it comes to short distance transportation. However, electric scooters still have an impact on the environment. There is no distance that a scooter could be used that could not be biked or walked, and aside from the novelty, there is little reason to use a scooter over biking or walking. The effort made by Bird and other scooter companies to provide alternative transportation is commendable, but poorly implemented. In the face of climate change, solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must be well thought out if they are to make a difference.

How do we know all this?

Electric scooters’ sudden invasion of American cities, explained

Are e-scooters polluters? The environmental impacts of shared dockless electric scooters