Working Bikes Co-Op – Community

Article of the Week:
0

Taxonomy upgrade extras

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Cycling & Recycling

Words by Lee Ravenscroft

Bike styles change, kids grow out of their bikes and bikes fall into disrepair. In addition, bike shops charge as much as $90/hour to repair a bicycle which makes many department store bikes not cost effective to repair. That’s where Working Bikes Co-op fits in.

For $15, we can transport a bike to the poorest person on the planet. For another $1, we can include the parts and tools to repair and keep that bike in service for years to come. We ship bikes in quantities of at least 500 with tools and parts included in each shipping container.

Everyone has seen a junk peddler’s truck mining the alleys in search of metal and every scrap truck has useful but broken cargo. In some cases, they have what appears to be totally useless cargo; one might find a bicycle in need of repair along an electric scooter and perhaps, even a treadmill. Both the scooter and the treadmill have wonderful permanent magnet motors that can be put into service as human powered battery chargers in a developing country.

This is the way Working Bikes Cooperative began. By following a scrap dealer to the scrap yard and never leaving. For years, we have positioned ourselves outside scrap yards in Chicago buying the detritus of society and finding it new uses or owners.

Bikes and wheelchairs are repaired and reused. Permanent magnet motors and batteries are used to produce power at street fairs.

Started in 2000, we initially sent bikes to Cuba and Central America with the Pastors for Peace then we graduated to sending our own containers of bikes to Nicaragua and Cuba. Once we started sending bikes to Africa, we discovered an entirely new solidarity community.

We now ship as many as 4000 bikes a year internationally and give away as many as 1000 bikes a year in the US in addition to the 1000+ bikes that we sell yearly in the Chicago area.

The model of sending bikes to projects in developing countries is not original but started by groups such as Cyclo Nord Sud in Montreal, Bikes Not Bombs in Boston, Bicycles Crossing Borders in Toronto and Pedals for Progress in New Jersey.

New groups sending bikes to developing countries include the Village Bicycle Project, Bikes for the World and Bicycles for Humanity. We coordinate our efforts with all these groups though each group has its own unique way of collecting bicycles, making repairs, financing shipments and managing international projects.

Chicago has a very well developed bike culture. The cycling community in Chicago is so large and committed that there are separate organizations that do youth programming and bike advocacy. This leaves Working Bikes Co-op free to focus on our mission of collecting bikes for our international and local partners. We have also provided financial help for other bike Co-ops to ship bikes to domestic and international development projects.