Reuse & Recycle

Episode 2 of the KABman adventures. KAB man is the invention of the ‘Keep America Beautiful‘ group pushing americans to be more conscious of their waste habits. These video’s are hilarious in their ‘understated’ hero. KABman is just a regular guy after all and shows that every ‘regular guy’ in america can be KABMan.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The 2009 Great American Cleanup Starts Today (ecochildsplay.com)

This is a really well done, funny and educational recycling video!

Most people owning a home have a garage or storage shed with one to many old bicycles that are just collecting dust. The homeowner usually takes the bicycles to the landfill when he or she decides to move instead of considerations for their recycling and reuse. Bicycles are probably the easiest to consider for recycling and reuse. Even if you cannot repair the bicycles, the parts can be used for other things but usually they can be restored through recycling and reuse. But here are some different options where you can give your old bicycles new life through recycling and reuse.

There are many places that take bicycles for recycling and reuse. Not all of them will come to your place and pick them up but they certainly do have drop off locations. Some places may collect a small donation for taking your bicycles so that they can use your donation to buy parts needed to put them back into service.

Rental and sharing outlets for bicycles would be good leads for recycling and reuse. For example, some cities in coastal areas rent bicycles for visitors along their beaches. Places like these would probably need used bicycles regularly.

Image by cobalt123 via Flickr

Recycling and reuse of bicycles can also be accomplished by making jewelry of the spare parts. There are ball bearings in the wheels that can make nice jewelry. Brake cables, spokes, and any other metal or shiny parts can be used to create designs only limited by the imagination.

Remove plastic and rubber parts if you are putting unwanted bicycles through recycling and reuse of the metal. This would be the case for bicycles that are unserviceable and you want to recycle the metal frame and parts only. Take the stripped bicycles to any metal recycling center where people take aluminum cans, copper tubing, and other unwanted metal items for meltdown, reuse, and recycling.

Recycling and reuse of bicycles is also promoted by teaching owners to repair and refurbish them. Anyone who knows how to work on bicycles will tell you that the basic repair and replacement of parts is not that difficult. No special tools other than those found in most households are needed.

Even if special tools are needed, there are many organizations that rent or donate workspace for those wanting to get involved in recycling and reuse of bicycles and repair their own. These spaces usually have all the tools needed plus in most cases there are on-site experts to help you. Some organizations also contribute to the recycling and reuse of bicycles by offering bicycle repair classes.

Recycling and reuse of bicycles is great for charitable causes. Consider that the populations of many developing nations use bicycles as their primary mode of private transportation. There are some global outreach programs that help recycling and reuse of bicycles by transporting their collections of unwanted bicycles to these countries and distributing them to needy families. There are also organizations that donate bicycles in the impoverished urban areas of their own countries.

Related articles

• A Canadian gift that is proving a lifeline (cbc.ca)
• Wheels 4 Life: Bringing Bikes to the Poor (treehugger.com)