Here’s a solution to most bikes’ dirty secret

Ever been biking in a park and been dismayed that your shiny metal bike didn’t quite fit in with your earthy, natural surroundings? So has designer Daniel Gestoso — so he dreamt up the Boske wooden bike.

Daniel Gestoso

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Like its predecessor, the Sandwichbike, the Boske is flat-packed in IKEA fashion; you only need an Allen wrench to put it together. Its frame is a bony figure eight made from laminated, sustainably harvested maple. Recycled pop cans provide the aluminum for the seat base and front fork. “All of this will allow production to stay local, reducing energy usage in transportation and distribution,” Gestoso told Fast Company.

Daniel Gestoso

The problem with typical aluminum bike frames is that mining aluminum is a huge energy suck. (It’s way worse than glass, for instance, not that you want a glass bike.) And even though it’s almost 100 percent recyclable, only about half of pop cans get recycled. As Umbra once wrote, “Americans are said to throw away enough aluminum in three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.” (Insert ashamed emoticon here.)

Daniel Gestoso

Although it’s still in the prototype phase, the Boske would help keep some of that metal out of the waste stream while helping you get around in low-carbon style. It might be the best we’ll get until someone invents a bike made out of air!