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Re~Cycle gets £180k lottery hand-out

The Colchester-based bicycle recycling charity has received £180,550 from the Big Lottery Fund’s Community Recycling and Economic Development (CRED) Programme to develop its operation in the UK.

The CRED money will be used for rent on extended premises, increased staffing, a van, equipment and tools.

Sue Lockyear, operations manager at Re~Cycle, said “CRED funding has enabled us to relocate our office and bike storage into one integrated unit in a more central, and therefore more accessible, premises. The general public will now more easily be able to bring their unwanted bicycles for recycling instead of dumping them at the community tip for scrap.”

The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT) and nine consortium partners manage the £36.5m CRED Programme on behalf of the Big Lottery Fund’s Transforming Waste initiative.

http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

http://www.re-cycle.org

Reusing unwanted bicycles

Re~Cycle takes bikes, plus a small donation, from the UK public.

There are millions of bikes lying rusting in garages or being thrown away in the UK.

The Royal Mail is the greatest source of bikes, in both number and quality, donating 4,500 load-carrying bikes per year. These used to be chopped in half and thrown away, after 7 years of being looked after by a full time mechanic ~ an extremely effective example of Re~Cycling.

Reuse is much better than recycling, for several reasons, including:

Manufacturing is the main source of pollution in bikes ~ in cars, half its life pollution is in its manufacture
Bikes are melted down, so the rubber and plastic are lost and pollute
Some money was invested in the original manufacture, many bikes just need servicing, and parts stripped from ‘dead’ bikes can be used