justinschulz9

Some of you guys have CoOp to give your spare parts, tubes, and rusty loner bikes to. What can someone who has zero access to a nonprofit like myself, do with old used rags, bugered up tubes, and just excess in general? lots of clutter at my shop, looking for a reasonable change.

veganbikes

If the rags are used and I do mean used, they can go in the garbage. I don't know that anyone would want my greasy rags because I use them and abuse them for the sole purpose of tossing out but you could soak them outside in some degreaser or something and try and clean them up a bit and let them dry in the sun?

Old tubes I tend to toss as well but I know there are folks who take them and re use them. I sometimes use them but generally I don't have many of them these days.

Other stuff I tend to keep as I tend to use it unless it is literal junk that has no purpose. Sometimes you might be able to use a part from something and make it work so if it can be saved I keep it. Parts bins are super handy and have lead to some excellent bike builds and some useful trades.

shelbyfv

Dumpster

Andrew R Stewart 

I have long thought that the best/easiest way for me to save the earth is to use stuff more then once. But at some point the stuff no longer serves anyone so it then gets tossed out the best way I can arrange. Andy

JoeTBM 

Not sure where you are at location wise but I would think there was at least some volunteer bike repair group locally, maybe a church group.

I have folks bring their unwanted parts all the time to my shop. We do take tubes, DERs, wheels, tires, etc.

Our motto is "If is if it fits or works on a bike, we can use it".

Yes, sometimes it is junk but we salvage and reuse what we can, metals go towards recycling.

We even have a local tavern save us their older bar towels and use them as rages.

If you want to donate/ship your excess parts, I will PM you our shipping address, it is not the same as the shop location.

easyupbug 

I agree with everything above and I am near a town of a half million folks and am lucky to have enough room to keep parts. I can usually cobble together a usable frame with parts from various years/brands/models/colors and they are very much appreciated by homeless shelters and groups supporting child well-being and family stability. They love Bikes! I even have a friend who will help with transportation to his favorite spot the Gospel Rescue Mission where he says a functioning bike rarely sees day two..

HMJ

My work area will need a purge sooner than later so here is how I envision doing it:

Rags: I use them as much as possible then pitch them. There's no way I'm putting those nasty thing into my washing machine - plus I have plenty of old T-shirts I can cut up.

Tubes: I use those to make rim strips so I keep those around.

Parts: I have a small bucket I throw the unusable stuff into: worn/rusted chainrings, crankarms, etc. A few roached wheels are in the corner of the basement work area.

Bikes: I have a few rough and really low end late 70's - early 80's bikes that have no value as bikes but have some value as parts. In that regard they have served me well. On the to-do list is to strip them of useable parts just to save some room.

My vision is to take the leftover frames and the other unusable items to the scrapyard and maybe - just maybe - I will have enough to buy a donut for the drive home

justinschulz9

I live on one of the hawaiian islands....the population doesnt seem to be large enough for a non profit out here. I was researching the idea at one point but i dont have the funding to brick and morter something like that.
but the answer is no there isnt a coop on island

JoeTBM 

I am originally from NY and worked in the city for over 40 years so there are over 8 million stories there.

Now retired to Florida in a county of only about 100,000 and the town where the bike shop is located is about 3,000 souls. We try to keep our work to within the county but do venture outside for special projects/events or requests.

Fortunately our brick and mortar location (about a 1,000 sq ft) is donated to us including electric usage but I would love to have 3 times that space as we are repairing/turning over about 1,700 bikes a year there.

At times the shop is so crowded it looks like a jumbled junk yard and we have to move 20 bikes outside just to be able to work and move around. We put a lot of our parts shelving bins on wheels so we don't lose any isle space. Smaller bikes and rims/tires hanging from the ceiling but could certainly use another 2-3 feet in height.

Sometimes it is challenging just to get to a part with out hitting your head 1 or 2 times..... just to give you an idea, here is a recent shot



We are constantly purging our spare parts as better ones show up and because of our location, we cannot pile up scrap outside so we are limited in how much we accumulate at a time but last month we hauled away about 600 lbs of steel and 150 lbs of aluminum to the recycler.