Doing right by the planet isn’t as hard as you might think. Sometimes it’s as easy as riding a bike.

Every time you choose to tackle an errand with an electric bike rather than a car, you’re making a choice that cuts down on your carbon footprint. And when you start to do that regularly, it adds up to a big win for the environment.

But what does that actually look like? To help give our riders a sense of the impact they’re making, we put together an emissions calculator. Just plug in how many car replacement kilometers you’re racking up each week to see how much CO2 you might be saving.

So how'd you do? It might be kind of hard to tell based on those numbers alone, so let's put them into context. 

CO2 is a greenhouse gas that builds in the atmosphere and wreaks havoc on the climate. Every time you drive a traditional petrol-powered car built after 2013, you release 130g of CO2 per kilometer as per a recent study by the European Commision for Energy, Climate Change and Environment.  

In comparison, let’s look at electric bikes. They don’t directly release emissions into the environment, but they do require energy to charge the battery. How that energy is generated depends on the power grid in your area. For instance, if you ride an average of 3km every day, your carbon dioxide off-set is 132.5 kilograms each year. 

So let's say you're really putting your motor to work and are getting about 60 kilometers for each charge. This would break down to about  9 grams of CO2 per km, which means you're saving a net total of 121 grams of CO2 for every car replacement kilometer!

That sounds pretty good on its own, right? Well, think about this:

What's even more exciting is that you're not doing this alone. With over 250,000 Rad riders joining you from across the globe, things start to get really exciting. 

If every RAD rider replaced just 8 kilometers per week, this would save over 2.667 US tons (2.420.000 kg) of CO2.

It’s no overstatement to say that committing to less time in a car is one of the most impactful things you can do as an individual, and giving riders like you the tools to do that is at the heart of our mission and vision.

We hope you’ll keep these numbers in mind next time you need run an errand or visit a loved one. If you’d like to learn more about what’s at stake for our planet, we’d love to direct you to some of the latest research compiled by NASA.