Revolutions -- that you can watch free above -- is a short documentary that asks sports enthusiasts, brands, and manufacturers to think differently about environmental sustainability by putting sporting goods at the centre of the conversation. The film uses the bike as a storytelling device to ask some important questions about sustainability such as: What happens to our “toys” when we’re done with them? What happens to a bike at its end-of-life stage? What would it take to design everything with the end in mind?
With an estimated 18 million new bikes purchased each year in America alone (National Bicycle Dealers Association, 2015), the bicycle has become an important cultural text that has largely managed to elide environmental criticisms even though it ends up in the landfill with all of our other garbage.
The Executive Producer of the film is Dr. Courtney Szto, Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen's University. Courtney is a member of the Mobilizing Sport & Sustainability Collective that hosts this website, and the affiliated UBC Centre for Sport and Sustainability.
For additional promotional materials pertaining the film, see below. For additional information about the circular economy and bicycles, see Dr. Szto's article (with Brian Wilson) entitled Reduce, re-use, re-ride: Bike waste and moving towards a circular economy for sporting goods in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport.
View the trailer here:
This documentary draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.