MikeM21

This question has been bothering me. Does anyone recycle old metal bike parts? Are old cassettes, cranks, chains, etc. recyclable? I have trouble throwing things away and I have some old metal laying around?

What say you wise wrenches?

dsbrantjr

Any metal salvage outfit should accept bike parts and pay cash on the spot. It may not be a lot but it does keep recyclable metals out of the waste stream and it is certainly better than paying someone to take it away.

bradtx

MikeM21, I recycle items that have truely reached the end of their service life.

Brad

HillRider

We have a biweekly recycles pickup. I put my unusable bike parts in the bins for metal recycling.

cny-bikeman

If your city recycling program accepts all metal toss the steel items in the bin. Aluminum is worth taking to a salvage yard if you accumulate a few pounds and it's on the way somewhere.

Rootman

A local scrap yard around here has a motto "If it's made of metal, WE WANT IT!". Find a place that accpets it, if it's worth anything they will pay, hopefully enough to make it worth the gas to get there. If you get enough buy yourself a new toy for the bike.

MikeM21

Thanks for the replies. I could just toss them out with our weekly recycling, but I was really wondering if there were any Bike Parts-Specific recycling efforts. Maybe a silly question but every time a take off an old cassette I just can't seem to throw it out. Maybe someone could turn a 13-28 into an 11-23?

FBinNY 

Many bike shops routinely recycle. To do so, you need to separate metals by type, aluminum, brass, steel & stainless steel. Aluminum, brass and stainless are worth money if properly segregated, but regular steel is nearly worthless, though you might get a few cents/lb if you deliver to a scrap yard.

The hardest items to recycle are eyeleted rims because they are mixed metal. One shop that did lot of wheel work, made a punch device to quickly break out the eyelets so they could gt full value for the aluminum. rims free of eyelets should be broken into sections less than a foot or so long since scrapmen like denser items.

The best prices are paid for nice chunks like crank arms. Derailleurs must be taken or broken apart.

Mixed metals that aren't qualified as scrap can go with the household recyclables.

reptilezs

we tried separating out the metals like aluminum but we do not have the time or space. we have a scrap guy take everything as is and he sorts the metal himself. steel is worthless. only worth saving the aluminum if you want to do it

cny-bikeman

I worked in a bike co-op back in the 70's, and between wanting to be responsible and not throw away money we did recycle. We had a large used bike sale and buy-back program and a large basement, so we even took steel to the scrapyard. Aluminium was handled by a trash barrel for everything but the rims, which were simply put over the outside of the barrel.

FBinNY 

Detailed recycling is a pain, but bike shops can and should save clean aluminum (free of mixed metals) chunks like crank arms. These are easy enough to save, take up little room and over the span of a year can add up to a nice bit of change. The rest can be given to a mixed metals recycler who won't pay, but will teke away free or a for a small charge.

An alternative way to recycle is to call the boy scouts. Many troops have active metal recycling programs they use to raise money.

3alarmer 

If your parts are still usable, find a bike co op near you and give them to them.

That's a part of what most bike co op places do. With regard to cassette and freewheel clusters,
it they are worn out to the point that they are not mechanically sound, do everyone a favor and
toss them in the metal scrap bin. We get large numbers of them that are beyond their useful
service life, and it is painful to go through them. Same with chains.

clasher

Scrap rims are worth more per pound than crankarms are, since rims are extrusions they are worth more. I pick out the eyeleted rims and they go as "#2 extrusions" at my local scrapper. I think they were still worth more than clean cast but I don't have a receipt here to look at. I also picked out all the old hubs, brake levers and arms, etc. that all went as mixed aluminum since it's not worth the time to punch out every brass bushing and whatnot. Since I was doing the scrap for the local co-op it was mostly plain rims so the biggest pain is cutting out spokes, but a bolt cutter makes quick work of that, and then I snapped the rims in a bench vise. Aluminum frames are worth saving too.