Shop Recycling

Generally speaking recycling is one of the key voluntary or involuntary goals of collectives and cooperatives -- as the re-use keeps bikes out of land fills.

Metal

Most metal found on a donated bike is going to be steel or aluminum. While you can use your eyes to tell the difference, a magnet makes no mistakes.

• Steel - This isn't always worth your time or storage, so take advantage of people that collect metal and recycle it for a living.
• Aluminum - This can be worth your time, consider bringing it to your local metal recycling facility.

Rubber

• Tires: While it is usually free to recycle tires, it will cost volunteer/staff time and transporation to do it.

1. Look in the phonebook under tire recycling.
2. Ask your local car tire shop where they take their used tires -- by law they have to recycle them.
3. Bring them to your local shred yard.

• Tubes: Have a few uses:

1. Volunteer busy-work patching tubes.
2. When sliced into sections they make industrial rubber-bands. Which are good for folding newly patched tubes.
3. Attach and tie things down.
4. Recycle at shred yards.
5. Cut them in half long-ways and use for wrapping handlebars.
6. Bring a chair back to life.
7. Send them to Splaff, Inc., Alchemy Goods or Green Guru Gear to turn into products.

Chains and Freewheels

Resource Revival actually has a program set up where you can ship them your used chains and freewheels at no cost to you. They in recycle your junk into art and sell it.

Shop Rags

Most collectives and cooperatives use them until they are so dirty they can't even be used to clean a chain. At which point you should bring them to your local hazardous waste facility just like old paint, oil, gasoline, etc.,...

The thought behind it is that the energy and detergent used by washing rags is worse than putting some reused cloth and possibly biodegradable grease into a landfill.

There are "rag services" that automotive shops use, where they collect the dirty ones, the service comes by and picks them up and drops off clean ones. This can be an expensive thing, and since there isn't alot of money in it for the service it is hard to get donated.

Used Part Cleaner Liquids

No matter how biodegradeable the liquid you wash your parts is, when you mix it with a petroleum based product like grease -- it becomes a hazardous material. As a result, used parts cleaner liquids must be treated as a hazardous material and brought to your local recycling facility.

See Also

• Parts Washers
• Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle