This re-cycling puts the bike brakes on poverty

Salt shakers
May 2003

This re-cycling puts the bike brakes on poverty
It's the time of year to clear the winter's dust from its frame and drag that old bike out of the basement. But if it's also time for you to get a new bicycle, a couple of off-beat programs would be grateful to re-cycle your old bike to help break cycles of poverty around the world.

Bikes Not Bombs works to achieve peace and social justice through grassroots organizing and promoting community-based education and development projects involving recycled bicycles and other environmentally sustainable modes of transportation. BNB operates a full-service bike shop where it repairs customer bikes, sells refurbished bikes with a warranty, and trains young people to become bicycle mechanics and community leaders. The group also offers adult mechanics classes, and organizes seasonal rides.

BNB receives approximately 1,500 used bicycles and used parts per year. They ship about 1,000 of these to community bike projects in Nicaragua and El Salvador. They have also sent bikes and technical assistance to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. BNB uses about 500 bikes at its Roxbury Center. Some are used in its youth Earn-A-Bike programs, and others are repaired by teenage mechanics in the Vocational Education program for sale in its bike shop.

A similar effort in Chicago, Working Bikes Cooperative, recovers landfill-destined bicycles, repairs them to working condition, and sells them to Chicagoans at a low cost in order to fund shipments of bicycles and bike parts to developing countries. All of WBC's work is done by volunteers.

Since its inception in 2001, the Working Bikes Cooperative has shipped nearly 1,000 bikes and parts to Nicaragua, Cuba, and Ghana.

Both groups are grateful for donations of money, time, and bicycles.—Kevin Clarke

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