Sport, Social Justice, and Development podcast: Symposium series: E-Bikes policy considerations and environmental costs

This panel - "E-Bikes: Policy Considerations and Environmental Costs" - delves into one of the more challenging mobility debates of our time. This is because e-bikes are often celebrated as a cleaner, 'greener' alternative to car dependence - an accessible pathway toward low-carbon mobility. But what happens when we look more closely at the environmental and social assumptions embedded in these sustainability claims?

This episode presents two distinct yet interconnected perspectives.

First, we hear from Darnel Harris, Executive Director of Our Greenway, a Toronto-based not-for-profit working to build sustainable, green, and equitable communities through low-carbon micromobility solutions. Drawing on over 15 years of work at the intersection of affordable housing, food justice, and local mobility, Darnel shares applied research on barriers and opportunities to e-bike adoption. He explores how infrastructure, socio-demographics, and lived realities shape whether e-bikes are truly viable mobility tools.

Next, we hear from Dr. Courtney Szto, an Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen's University. Building on her documentary Revolutions, Dr. Szto challenges us to consider the environmental footprint of bicycles at their end-of-life stage. To do this, she examines issues of bike waste, lithium batteries, limited repairability, and how contemporary e-bike production may reproduce extractive logics and waste-intensive systems

Darnel Harris' LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darnel-harris-072296127/
Dr. Courtney Szto LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-szto-128aa222/
Featured in this episode: Darnel Harris, Dr. Courtney Szto, and Dr.Lyndsay Hayhurst
Music by: Kevin McLeod and Broke for Free via the 'Free Music Archive!
Album artwork: Keiron Cobban