What If You Could Filter Dirty Air Just By Riding A Bike?
Get the Full StoryRiding a bike in a smoggy city–and sucking in exhaust from the tailpipes of the cars in front of you–can undo the benefits of exercise. In Beijing, artist Daan Roosegaarde is beginning to imagine one potential solution: a bike that could pull in dirty air, filter it, and release clean air.The concept is one part of Roosegaarde’s larger Smog Free Project. At TED 2017, Roosegaarde, who works in both the Netherlands and China, outlined the project so far, including a seven-meter tall tower designed to sit in parks or playgrounds and purify surrounding air though there are some questions about how well this works . Roosegaarde has also turned the black soot from Beijing air into smog jewelry. In theory, the new bikes will work in a similar way to the tower.
If we can use this design to bring back the prestige of the bicycle, that would really create an impact on pollution on a short-term scale.” Image: courtesy Studio Roosegaarde “We’ll be morphing to the bicycle–making it smaller and more energy-friendly or energy-neutral,” Roosegaarde tells Fast Company. “But it would give clean air to the person who cycles. Beijing was a cycling city 10 years ago, and then everyone wanted a car. If we can use this design to bring back the prestige of the bicycle, that would really create an impact on pollution on a short-term, a 10-14 month scale.”
He envisions that the design, which is still in development, could be added to China’s rapidly growing network of bike-shares. At least half a million shared bikes are now in use in Beijing. One bike-share company alone, Mobike, has more than 10 million users in 21 cities.
“If we can update those bikes with this kind of thing, then you can create an impact on the average pollution, and then it becomes fascinating,” Roosegaarde says. “It should be more than a one-off.”
The bikes will likely become part of a program–that includes the Smog Free Towers and other yet-to-be-designed smog-sucking technology–that the designer is pitching to polluted cities as a way to temporarily purify pockets of air while cities work on larger reforms.
“It will always be connected with big programs of government and green technology and electric cars,” Roosegaarde says. “They do top down, we do bottom up, and we meet in the middle.”
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