A wheelie great idea to Re-Cycle your bike
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Abel and Cole and Re-Cycle
Hands up who has an old bike in their garage or shed? An unloved, unused bike or one that was bought with good intentions that never sees the light of day perhaps?
Now you can put it to good use! Abel & Cole have teamed up with Re~Cycle, who we featured on our site last year, to collect 650 unwanted bikes to send to Ghana, where they are greatly needed.
Over here we jump in our cars to drive a mile to the shops, while in Africa a four hour daily walk to school, work, and water is common. Some children face a 20 mile journey to get to school and back and motorised transport costs families a quarter of their tiny income.
If you’ve got a bike in need of a new home, there are two ways for you to get involved with the Wheelie Big Bike Drop.
You can either attend the pedal powered party in Wimbeldon 11am-3pm on Saturday 25th September where Abel and Cole will be serving up homemade organic burgers and beers and will be pedal powering the smoothie machine and music! While you’re there, you can find out more about the work Re~Cycle does.
If you can’t make the pedal powered party, you can drop off your old bike, bike parts, and any bike tools to regional depots in Wimbledon, Tamworth, Maidstone, Ongar, Warrington and Andover, 9am-1pm on Saturday 2nd October.
If you can’t get to one of these please still pledge your bike and then Abel and Cole will get in touch to see if they can find an alternative plan.
You can donate bikes of all shapes and sizes, including childrens. It doesn’t matter if the bike is in less than perfect condition, or even if it has a puncture or missing pedals! And they will happily accept puncture repair kits, pumps and cycle helmets too.
The donated bikes we be shipped to women in Ghana who will be shown how to maintain the bikes. Merlin Matthews set up Re-Cycle 12 years ago to collect unwanted bikes, parts and tools in the UK in order to ship them to the poorer rural areas in Africa where partner projects use them to help local people get around.
So now there’s no excuse; you can create room in your sheds and garages and put your old bikes to good (re)use.
While you’re pledging to put your old bike to good use, remember to sign up on our zero waste week page to reduce your food waste next week too! You could win a £50 voucher for LUSH or Natural Collection.
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Here in Cardiff, our Council, via Recycle, takes unwanted bikes at one specified “dump”. These bikes are reconditioned and used to promote cycling in schools and sold also to the general public to promote this form of exercise/sport.
Every family must in time produced a certain amount of bicycle waste, how they dispose of it is of concern. Do people take the time to hand bikes down, or do they take the easy option and dump them? Even if they are handed down, there still comes a point when they are no longer needed, so this form of recycling is desperately needed and should be promoted more widely.
Hi I am a bit behind this week due to a very nasty cold. but sign me up as usual, I am busy preserving and making pickel. with green tomatoes and chilli.. also reducing our portion size. measuring rice and pasta etc. the poor chicken will go hungry this week. good luck to everyone taking part
Hi we collect recycled bikes here in Victoria Australia for Bicycles for Humanity which we send to Namibia in a shipping container. When delivered the container becomes a bike maintenance shop and the bikes are reconditioned by people learning to do bike maintenance. Some of the bikes have trailer which are attached to be used as AIDS transport for those who have HIV/AIDS to get to health centres and hospitals. These trailers are pedalled by health visitors etc
http://www.bicyclesforhumanity.com
Go to Australia and then the St Kilda Melbourne Chapter. Its fantastic and have a listen to the little jingle which was drawn by the Melbourne chapters founders child. Its lovely.
@H0gg1t: What a great idea to promote health and fitness in the UK too. We tend to take old bikes to the ‘reuse’ area at our recycling centre and always get them from there or from a friend with an older daughter than ours.
@sandy: Sorry to hear you have been unwell Sandy. Looks like you are all set for zero waste week; enjoy the preserving 🙂
@Stephanie: Hi Stephanie, thank you for telling us about the great scheme going on in Australia. I love the idea about the shipping container becoming a workshop! Will go and listen to the jingle later 😉