IF YOU OWN a rusty old bike, and you’re thinking about dumping it, consider giving it away to be upcycled and reused.
A new bike scheme, launched to reduce waste in Ireland, means you can now drop old bikes to the Estuary Recycling Centre operated by Fingal County Council for a small fee.
The bikes are then collected by the Rediscovery Centre in Ballymun where they are repaired, redesigned and sold.
Paul Callan, a qualified bike mechanic and Recycabike programme manager, works on the bikes along with up to three others, who are all hired through FAS employment schemes.
Tara Singleton, programme manager at the Rediscovery Centre, explains what they do with the old bikes:
We try restore, refurbish and repair the bikes we collect. If we can’t, we break them down for use of their parts. But hardly anything goes to waste. We try and reuse everything, we even turn old tubes into wallets during waste and education workshops.
We also run a whole bike repair service and teach children how to repair punctures themselves.
The bikes are then sold from the shop at the Rediscovery Centre in Ballymun where an upcycled bike will cost around €130, depending on the redesign and what people want.
The money then goes back into the employment and training schemes.
The rx3, rethink, recycle, remake initiative, funded by the Department of the Environment, Community & Local Government, released this video showing how the bike reuse scheme works:
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