I wandered to a random lane on campus that ran beside a building with a bicycle rack. I mainly focused on the cyclists coming and going, and I made a note of several of their perceived problems. One note about sustainability that I made was that there were a not insignificant number of abandoned bicycles on the racks. I did some research on this, and it seems like this is a known problem around campus, caused by the abandonment of bikes during covid. I was thinking that this would pose an interesting sustainability problem to solve.
Problem Statement:
"A Stanford student was upset because they were unable to find a place to park their bike in the morning because the racks filled with discarded bicycles. When they try to report the discarded bikes to the impounding authority they find out that they are unable to impound the bike due to an excess of bikes unable to be effectively disposed of. The people who abandoned their bikes may have made an honest mistake, but the overall lack of consideration for the sustainability and environmental impacts associated with bicycles means that there is a dearth of public support for bike sustainability and recycling."
