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
- 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 - These can be difficult to recycle, but shred yards will often take them for free. You may have arrange your own transportation, and bring them by at specific times.
- Tubes - Can be patched (good volunteer busy-work), used to attach and tie things down, or recycled at shred yards.
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
Rags are in endless supply and an easy donation to get. Surplus T-shirts from past athletic events work great too. 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.