A Sydney-based bicycle recycler is collecting hundreds of abandoned share bikes from the city’s streets to keep them from going into landfill.
Key points:
- About 250 bikes have been left abandoned on the streets of Sydney by the company Mobike, otherwise known as OnYahBike
- The company collapsed in 2022
- A bike recycler is repairing some bikes to be used by underprivileged youth and melting down others to make new metal products
Revolve ReCYCLING is targeting the bikes left on the street and in warehouse storage from the failed company Mobike.
Pete Shmigel from Revolve ReCYCLING said the company had picked up 150 bikes off the street so far.
“There’s a lot of bikes that … are out on the streets of Sydney,” Mr Shmigel told ABC Radio Sydney.
“[There are] about 250 bikes that the owner really irresponsibly just left scattered about.”
Mr Shmigel said there were also about 1,600 bikes sitting in the storage facility at Riverstone that Mobike’s liquidator said were valueless.
“That means that, eventually, their destiny is to go to the tip if we can’t find something better to do with them,” Mr Shmigel said.
The group is working with the City of Sydney and other bike operators such as Lime, Beam, Neuron, and Airbike to pick up the bicycles from Mobike, which was rebranded as OnYahBike.
Other bike operators are collecting the bicycles during their routine service operations.
“OnYahBike failed. The overall sector has done the right thing here and Revolve ReCYCLING has further stepped up,” Fiona Campbell from City of Sydney said.
From bikes to bike lanes
If the bikes can be repaired and ridden again, Revolve ReCYCLING fixes them and delivers them to charitable causes that provide the bikes to underprivileged kids.
Some of the partners they work with include Tribal Warrior Aboriginal Corp in Redfern, the Ukrainian Council of NSW, and the national peak body AusCycling.
Mr Shmigel said the company would scrap any bikes that were not repairable and salvage their metal and rubber.
“We’re working with our partners to make sure that the tyres and tubes end up in things like playground equipment and maybe even bike lanes,” he said.
“You can use rubber in asphalt instead of using some of the other additives.”
The bike frames would be melted down for their steel and aluminium to make new metal products.
“The footprint of recycling that metal is much, much smaller than the footprints of digging big holes in the ground, running trucks all over the place, processing the material,” Mr Shmigel said.
Lying around unusable
Mr Shmigel said while some Mobikes remained on the streets, they were locked and “totally useless” because the owner shut down the GPS system.
“That’s why we have to get them back to the warehouse [and] undo the locks.”
He said bikes that could be unlocked and were still functioning would be given to the company’s charity programs.