We had a change over in staff at the shop and we have uncovered some past practices that are less than ideal. As I have dove into the basement of the Collective I have found boxes of used tires tucked away, and inner tubes strewn about. I have also gone through numerous bikes that have been cannibalized and had parts re-purposed elsewhere. Those bikes are barely rolling frames.
During my adventure of sorting through the inventory, I realized we had a lot of unusable bikes fit for the road. How ever some old bikes have a vibe to them. They could be sold as new category of bike. The Garden Bike category was born. Okay, Garden Bike is a special way to say yard art.
The Garden Bike is a bike that appears to be functional from afar. In reality it is a rolling frame that has saddle, controls, and all major components. The tires most likely are dry rotted and the chain may or may not exist. But the bike itself gives off a vibe and could be placed in ones garden or yard to give it character. In short, I am repurposing these bikes to be yard decorations.
So the Garden Bike allowed me an outlet to sell a bike for a few dollars and keep the bike out of the landfill. The two main goal of the bike collective is to help the under served and to keep bikes out of landfills. For years, the staff would tear the bikes down completely to a frame. I have wheels in basement, and tires and tubes hanging everywhere. Frames of bikes in random places. Seat posts and handlebars jammed into over filled boxes. You can see a bone yard of bikes with no discernable logic other than hoarding. Thankfully I have fellow board members who can haul things to the scrap yard as we go through the madness. If I understand correctly, we have scrapped out 3 tons of bikes since early December. This is one bike collective amassing this much stuff, and we are about half way through the deep cleaning we need to do. Scraping out bikes is not ideal to me, but at least I have the assumption the metal will go through a sorting process and be melted into something new.
This leaves me with the tubes and tires. For now I think I have a solution for the tubes. I am going to try upcycling the tubes to a location in Colorado. I think I can dispose of 20 tubes responsibly for $10. That leaves me with about 100 bicycle tires I need to dispose of. I have searched the depths of duck duck go. I have seen similar blogs and followed the leads that others offered up. I have reached out to other bike collectives in the area. I am baffled that the most environmentally unfriendly item cyclist have is almost impossible to recycle without paying. I am not being cheap (Yes, I am), but trying to manage a budget on a non-profit budget is making this challenging. I can contact a rubber tire recycling company and coordinate a pick up. They will have to drive 4 hours round trip to pick up and then I pay by weight. The most economical option I have, that I do not like is paying $4 a tire at the local landfill. They in turn will collect a load of tires, then contact the aforementioned rubber tire recycling company to collect them.
Recycling tires has proven to be problematic and costly for the bike collective. $400 may not be a lot to most people and businesses. But when you are trying to keep the books balanced and making the local cycling community better, that $400 changes how we do business. I am actually more amazed the cycling tire manufactures are not offering a service of sorts. I believe Schwalbe has something, but that is in Europe. Other stateside locations that claim to do it, are a few states away. Trust me, I have felt like recreating the Seinfeld episode of taking the pop cans to Michigan. In that scenario, I will make Guitar Ted, Neuman ;)
I know I am ranting about tires, and I usually just cut mine own personal ones up and toss in the garbage. I have been re-visiting that practice completely once I was faced with piles of unusable tires. It is one of those things in life that your perception does not consider things till confronted. I think as a consumer going forward I am going to challenge the cycling industry to be better stewards of the environment.
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