The Ultimate Off-road, Utility E-Cargo for Hertfordshire

London Colney Parish Council is proving that real climate action can be local, visible, and powered by pedals.

With the introduction of an Estarli e-cargo bike into its operations, the council has reimagined how it delivers public services—from planting trees to cleaning up litter and engaging with schoolchildren on clean air. The result? A greener, more efficient, and more connected community.

In this #myestarlistory we see how Councillor Matt Fisher’s e-cargo bike – designed and built in Hertfordshire by Berkhamsted-based manufacturer Estarli and funded through the Greener Together initiative – has replaced the need for diesel vans in many day-to-day tasks. Whether it’s transporting tools for conservation work or collecting recycling from local hubs, the bike has allowed council staff to carry out their roles more swiftly, sustainably, and visibly.

“The thing that’s overwhelming is how easy stuff is to do, and how quick it is… doing this stuff in a van is just ridiculous,” said Environment Officer Matt Fisher, mid-task while riding the e-cargo with crates of recycling and litter-picking equipment strapped to the back.

From that simple observation, it’s clear: the e-cargo bike isn’t just greener—it’s smarter.

0:00 Intro
1:08 Becoming carbon literate and ‘going local’
1:50 Ease of local tasks on the e-cargo vs. a van or car
3:55 His message to other local authorities
4:05 Estarli e-cargo versatility
4:38 Local appetite for cycling & ambition to improve cycle lanes
5:07 E-cargo rewilding case study
5:55 A closer look at the London Colney Parish Council e-cargo setup & accessories
7:55 Clean Air Day & anti-idling campaign initiative
8:10 Day to day use off-road

I’m Matt Fischer. I’m the environment officer at London Colony Parish Council. I also have another hat on where I’m a district counselor for St. Orin’s District Council with the Green Party and most recently at the last elections become county councelor for St. Orbin’s central. We’ve acquired the bike through a greener together grant which is an initiative that’s been pushed down from Harts County Council to St. Orin’s district council. So we just get our way to the recycling bin. We got about £2,000 grant towards the bike with the idea that we would reduce our carbon footprint as a parish council for our staff. The other component is to promote active travel to show and to illustrate that leadership really that this is an option. But the other one really is to promote it in a fashion that we can loan the bike out to schools to young families that have got young children that can go on the back and obviously do the school run on that. So it is a case of promoting that active travel from within rather than it being on a brochure or just a you know conversation or an advert. This is very much hands-on and they can go and see it. These cans, not only have they been taken from various sites, but the majority of them actually been collected from litterpicks, which we use the bike for as well. This is right in the back of yours. I have to probably do a multi-purpose. I’ve been an avid cyclist for all my life really. And when I become a district counselor, I looked for an alternative. When I become carbon literate, one of the pledges was to reduce my carbon footprint driving around. Obviously as a green council it’s not not an ideal look and I haven’t got an electric car but I have got now an electric bike or rather two of them. All those cans rattling around. I wanted to go local and you guys and it was a tried and tested. I got the Eastley 20.8 which is a little foldup bike and that serves me perfectly. You know I can get some stuff in the panas go to meetings. It means I turn up not as a sweat mess so I don’t turn up in Lyra. I can turn up with a suit or a jacket and go and see my constituents and get about a cargo counselor. Yeah. It’s got a nice ring to it isn’t it? So that tried and tested kind of experience I’ve had with you guys there was the obvious choice when I wanted to go for this cargo bike idea. Thing that’s overwhelming is how easy stuff is to do and how quick it is. You know, doing this in the back of a car or a van, it’s just ridiculous. Yeah, the little errands of running into town or or doing something as a counselor has been super efficient. You know, I don’t have to find a parking space. I literally just pull up outside someone’s door. It it it just it’s a testament to how easy this is. If only people understood the shift is so easy. We wanted a bright colored bike for visibility and all rest of it to showcase that we are out there as a parish council and throughout the district as well. We’ve gone for the uh for the knobbybly tires, the off-road tires because so much of it as you can see is not just on road but going across to pavilions, sport centers and so on and across across various tracks. Okay, so just approaching uh the scout hut here where we’ve got our recycling bin. with Pierce’s group and uh we collect all of the cans here. We’re going to drop them off as so it’s one place. We’re having the long tail. It is that much more familiar than the bigger cargo bikes that that that are out there. That’s what we’re collecting at least that on every litter pit. Yeah. I just love the way it’s so easy to ride. It’s so easy to charge. You got that reliance. You know, you hear so much of the safety aspects as well. So, you know, with yourselves, it’s great to know that it’s all properly engineered and it’s it’s bonafideed and it’s not some cheap knockoff as it were. You’re only seeing it midway at the moment. We’ve got a third one which makes us uh look a little topheavy, but really it depends what you put on on there. But um that’s just to build up the cargo capacity. And we can of course remove those boxes to put one adult in the back or indeed a couple of kids. And we’re already doing work with the head teachers to promote not only the active travel component, but also this being the jewel of the crown in terms of getting your children to school so so safely and easily. Since I joined the parish council, lots of the stuff that we were doing locally was was reliant on low loader vans, cars, 4x4s, and d I say at walking as well. So caretakers walking from A to B rather than cycling. Not a good use of time. U but it was it was sort of seemed to be a very heavy way of using you know engines and uh cars and vehicles to get from A to B. It’s you know a mile or two away. Hoping that um other local authorities can take evidence in that and it’s a package that can work. It’s low-level cost. It’s convenient and yeah, everyone can make it make it part of their working practice. Someone did point out that we have the adaptations to the bike are immense, but when we go to do a litter pick, we’ve got the bags, we’ve got the litter pickers, we’ve got the hoops, and of course, whilst we got all of that, we’re either on a little radio uh or the WhatsApp and just calling into people saying when they need a collection of of a bag or or some waste or there’s a flight tip that needs to be photographed and reported that we can get round and do that in the two-hour window that we’ve got. So yeah, it’s quite fun to be able to see the multitude of uses that we can get out of one bike. Right onto the next adventure. So I think there’s an appetite for cycling. The challenge is when people get on their bike and they realize the state of the roads. So I think we need to do a bit of work on that. And now with my newly formed role as as county council, I can very much showcase this. Although we’ve got an appetite for cycling, we really need to do better on the cycle lanes, i.e. maintenance. Uh they need to be more joined up. work is being done, but we need to go much harder on it. I think getting that road awareness out there and having the confidence in people that it is a safe and easy to ride bike is half the battle. So, we’re coming into Walsingham Way playing field, which is a rewed area, and we’ve got the um we’ve got the whips that were planted about a about 18 months or so ago with the idea of providing some habitat and biodiversity. Um, and here we are coming into an enclosed area uh of which there is a pond. It’s very much work in progress, but this little beast, our bike, uh, was pretty pivotal in this. We’ve collected some sand from MKM Builders, a local building merchant. They’ve been really supportive and literally put in one of these, um, about three or four bags of sand, about 100 kgs, uh, which was fine. Uh, and now they’re underneath the molding as it stands at the moment. So, we dug this out by hand with a little bit of a help at the last minute with a digger. So, the idea being this is will be a rewalded area. Let me give you a a rundown of what we’ve got set up. So, we’ve got a little basket at the front and we need to get a little bit more with a lid and so on, but that’s just for ancillary stuff. So, we’ve got like the the high viz jacket uh and we are a little bit of advertising there. So, that goes on and we might be we might be issuing uh these out to litter pickers and so on. So, that’s all good. Obviously, hydration by way of our coffee. We’ve got multitude of different lights. So, when we’re coming at nighttime locking up places, we need to spread some light over the fields and security wise and so on. So, we’ve got a couple of lights on the front that we’ve added. They’re just little rechargeables. We’ve got the one that’s provided with the bike. And we’ve got this high this two 2,500 lumens rechargeable one here. We’ve got this wonderful uh lock here, CT lock, the strongest one in the world. So, we don’t generally lock it up because we’re, you know, working from the bike really. We’ve also got the kicker plates here to keep, you know, when when the boxes are off and where you put your feet. this uh the boxes here. We’ve got three of them. Um we look like we’re uh somewhere out of Bali, right? Going all India on our little tuk tuks. But the idea being of those we’re going to cut out a section so that we can put spades uh and bags of whips that might be I don’t know 3 4 foot in length. So we remove those boxes and then of course you got your trusty you sit down on here and then what we’ve got here this is the the quick draw John Wayne. We’ve also got not we’ve had a puncher yet. We’ve got our little um CO2 canister packed away there. Lots of banan straps as well for snacking stuff on. And we’ve got these really useful rock straps that uh can can obviously tie all of the uh the cargo back right down on it. These little LED lights here either side. All about visibility. So, we elected to go for the uh the bigger capacity battery uh knowing that obviously, you know, we don’t want to wheel it out and get to use it when actually someone that used it beforehand didn’t put it on charge and so on. So, yeah. So, that’s been really good. We’ve hardly had to charge it. It’s quite incredible. So, on to the next one, which is we’re going to go to the school where we’re doing an anti- idling campaign. Here he goes. He’s off. We’re showcasing it with the anti idling campaign. This is all working towards the 19th of June, which is the clean air day this year. Um, so we’re we’re working with the three schools locally and beyond to promote active travel um and reduce the carbon footprint that we all have when we go from A to B. Can’t do this in a van. This is not just in the sun, but in the winter, you can get across here and you got your mud guards. So, you kind of once you go back to the office or whatever, you’re not covered in mud. It’s It’s just really flexible. It’s so effortless. I’m doing 17 1/2 mph and I’m barely pedaling. And like I said to you years ago when I first got my my uh 20.8, it took me back to being a kid. Yeah. I just jumped on the bike and I was like making all these weird noises cuz it’s it’s just it’s just excitement. It’s a delight. You know, the the cycling experience is great, but also you’re out in nature and you’re speaking with everyone and the local community. It’s just I think when the world latches on, we’ll be covered in these bikes, right? [Music] I think the big interest is at the schools and so if you’re interested in in maybe loaning this out, trying it out for two or three days, seeing how that fits into your lifestyle, seeing if it can work, get in touch with us at London Colony Parish Council. That’s a lovely little uh whistle stop tour of uh London Colony Parish. Uh, I’m going to whiz through here and put this beast away for a few hours. There we are. I don’t know how many steps I got in today, but that’s a lot better than uh driving around in a hot, sweaty car.