as is cycling for pleasure, unnecessary and encourages higher consumption of both bicycle components and food with associated environmental impacts, where do you want to stop with your carbon footprint?
Yes and no. I'm not really eating anything extra to go cycling, I'm burning off the fat I've already created by eating too much. It's also worth noting that most of us aren't powering our riding purely from air freighted asparagus, and thus it's generally a pretty low CO² activity. There is something to be said for the non recyclability of Composites like Carbon Fibre, which is not exactly environmentally friendly, but for most other parts they are recyclable, or can be at least reused.
The only item other than carbon fibre I've not found a clear recycling chain for is my tyres. Dead tubes get repurposed as art, and other items. Chains get re-purposed as jewellery (As featured on last weeks GCN tech show!), cassettes ditto, and I'm looking at seeing if I can recycle these into Damascus too. My bike is steel so at end of life it can be melted down and recycled. Etc...
Bikes are pretty damn green, and given I'm using it for commuting instead of a car, it's very good. *BUT* the points re baby wipes is still valid, esp as they are not necessary to the function of the bike.
J