Re-Cycle

Re-Cycle

At a glance

Causes

  • Environment
  • International development
  • Training / employment support

Other details

Geographical remit: 
International

Objectives

  • A bike lightens this burden and dramatically improves their wellbeing.
  • Re-Cycle is a bike recycling charity who collects donated bikes from the UK and ships them to our charity partners in Africa. We also provide bike maintenance training and we’ve set up bike workshops in Gambia and Ghana.
  • We have big plans to expand this service to other parts of Africa, also helping school children
  • We make sure the bikes we send are good quality, sturdy and sustainable.
  • They are scrutinised by certified mechanics for suitability at our warehouse and repaired in Africa by trained mechanics.
  • Any bikes which are not suitable for use in Africa, are either sold or stripped for parts by our volunteers. All money raised from the sale of these bikes is used to support our on-going costs.
  • Transport and development go hand-in-hand.

Activities

Bike collections
We collect disused and unwanted bikes from many generous donors across the UK, many of which are brought to us through our significant partnership with Halfords. Our network of partners, bike shops, re-use projects and collection points across the UK continues to grow year on year. Enter your postcode on our home page to find your nearest drop-off point

Inspection, stripping & redistribution
Once the bikes arrive at our warehouse, each bike is inspected and graded. Any deemed unsafe, in a poor condition or unsuitable for use in Africa are sold on or stripped for much needed spare parts. We only send bikes to our partners that we ourselves would ride!

Usable bikes, along with any reusable parts, are then loaded into shipping containers (around 500 per container) and distributed to our African partners. Some spare parts are also purchased new, such as brake pads and cables.
We don’t do any refurbishment of these bikes in the UK. We prefer to train our African partners to carry out this work so that they can employ local bike mechanics, create employment and a place for new bike owners to repair their bikes.

African partnerships
We have a careful selection process for incoming bikes, to ensure that our partners are able to fully refurbish the bikes that we provide, have the capability to securely store them and a business plan in place to ensure they reach beneficiaries in a financially sustainable way. We are particularly aware of the local bike market and we look for evidence to demonstrate that the bikes are really needed and of benefit to the host community.
 

Measuring our impact

We work closely with our project partners to obtain narrative feedback and case studies to demonstrate how our bikes have made an impact. Our project team and bike mechanics also visit projects regularly for training, monitoring and evaluation.

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