→Environmental impact: Since the researchers provide evidence that common sustainability benefit claims into question, it is appropriate to qualify the alleged benefits with terms like "purported," "alleged," and "claimed."
A [[life cycle assessment]] of e-scooter sharing systems performed by researchers at [[North Carolina State University]] calls theclaims of sustainability benefits of the programs into question, finding that nearly two thirds of the time people use shared e-scooters, they are creating more CO2 emission than they would have if scooter share was not an option. The LCA took into account materials and manufacturing, use, transportation and charging, and end-of-life for shared dockless e-scooters. Additionally, the researchers used surveys of users to gather information on usage habits and patterns, and found that e-scooter use displaced use of a personal automobile or ride share service only 34% of the time. Without an e-scooter option, 49% said they would have biked or walked and 11% would have used a city bus, three modes of transportation with significantly lower per-passenger-mile carbon footprints than e-scooters, and 7% of users reported that they would not have taken the trip otherwise. The authors concluded that 65% of the time, e-scooter usage creates a net increase global warming impact over the transportation modes it displaces, and while e-scooters may improve urban congestion, they do not reduce environmental impacts from transportion.<ref name=Hollingsworth>{{cite journal |last1=Hollingsworth |first1=Joseph |last2=Copeland |first2=Brenna |date=2 August 2019 |title=Are e-scooters polluters? The environmental impacts of shared dockless electric scooters |url=https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2da8#erlab2da8f3 |journal=Environmental Research Letters |volume=14 |issue=8 |pages= |doi=https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2da8 |access-date=6 May 2022}}</ref>
