Guide to running a bicycle repair and recyclers program

Australia has a huge problem with unwanted bikes, with as many as 500,000 ending up in landfill each year. Bicycle repair programs understand that bicycles are a useful asset, both in cutting emissions and keeping people fit. They are also increasing in popularity with the cost-of-living crisis. Bicycle repair and recycle initiatives complement bike shops’ services by extending the life of bikes, and selling and/or distributing quality, restored bicycles.

It is important to consider all of the following steps on your path to success. For bicycle repair and recycler initiatives, we have highlighted several key capabilities that are worth further consideration. They may provide more challenges and opportunities along the way.

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Phase one: Scope and plan

Establish baseline community need and abilities

Learn about the volunteers, customers and repairers in your target area. Find out about their knowledge of bicycle products, buy-in of circular economy ideals, and the attitudes and behaviours regarding purchase and repair. You will be in a better position to design well-attended events with suitable repairers if you understand where your bike riders are coming from, their ability to make their own repairs, and your volunteer repairers’ skills to make repairs and teach repairing methods. You will need at least one qualified mechanic to test bikes for safety before reuse.

Plan your program

Good planning sets your initiative up for success of your initiative as it determines the systems, structure and approach of your program.

Build around your core goals Articulating what drives you will also help connect others to your vision. Then you can think about the activities that will help you achieve it. Most programs aim to promote re-using and repairing to extend the life of bikes, before disposing of or recycling them. To demonstrate the importance of the circular economy and waste avoidance, it is important that you communicate the benefits of resource efficiency and cost savings through your different activities, including:

• parts storage, bicycle repair and rebuilding
• selling and second-hand giving
• diversion of scrap materials and unfixable bikes to metal and rubber recycling.

Set your boundaries

To plan your program, you must clarify your business model. Do you restore, sell and distribute the bikes? Do you just repair? Do you also teach bike maintenance skills?

A bicycle program is more complex than a bicycle shop’s activities. You’ll need to understand your potential challenges and have a plan to deal with them. For example, it is likely that you will get more parts than expected in varying conditions. It may be hard to access new parts. And without a plan, you may be overwhelmed with bikes of poor quality that can’t be restored.

Depending on your activities, you will also need to understand how much space you require for:

• selling bikes
• storing new, good and poor condition donations, including low-quality bikes for recycling
• receiving bikes and triaging of bicycles – if you are accepting donated bikes, there will be a huge amount of triaging)
• storing parts including tyres, tubes, frames, wheels and other smaller parts
• tools and tool storage
• repair stations
• storing scrap metal and rubber.

Also consider your cost structure including rent, staffing, parts and collection costs. Overheads may also include bike stands, tools and storage tubs for parts. Depending on your starting budget, you may need to limit your parameters.

Decide what to do with low-end bikes

To set you up for success, it is important to understand your organisation’s current systems and resources to manage contamination. Do you have the tools, capacity and knowledge to restore/repair e-bikes and low-end bicycles?

Many bicycle recyclers refer to low-end, poor quality donated bikes as ‘contamination’. Lowend bicycles could be very old and rusted with obsolete parts. They could be mass-produced lower-quality bikes, often sold by department stores and bulk sporting stores, with heavy frames and cheap components that would not pass safety standards even if fixed.

Low-end bikes are mostly only good for being recycled because they are difficult to repair and maintain, potentially becoming dangerous very quickly. You may only be able to break them down for metal recycling.

Many bike repair programs do not recommend accepting low-end bicycles because they are not sustainable. Some bicycle repairers have estimated low-end bicycles – often sold through department stores and bulk sporting stores – cost them $25 per bike to break down for recycling.

However, if you do have the capacity and resources to repair or restore low-end bikes, they can be good first-time bikes, especially for children and young teens who grow quickly. They are also good for people who can't afford a higher-end bike.

Manage risk and maintain Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs)

Assess your risks

Understand the risk profile of your intended activities. Take steps to mitigate risk through:

• appropriate insurance
• disclaimers
• management processes, such as volunteer induction and repairer registration.

You will need insurance to cover your liability and risk of death or injury from selling or giving away faulty refurbished bikes. Understand your responsibilities for workplace safety. Create a risk register that you review at every team meeting to improve your systems and practices that help you minimise your risk and respond well to incidents.

Understand your agreements

MOUs are the agreements you have with your key partners such as venues and volunteers. They are useful in establishing clarity around everyone’s roles and responsibilities to help you minimise risk and build productive partnerships.

For example, Brainwave Bikes has an MOU to define its partnership with waste contractor Cleanaway, which collects bicycles left out in council hard waste. The MOU specifies how to collect and store the bicycles to minimise damage and increase the chance the bikes will be reused.

Design activities to change behaviours

Programs should include a variety of behaviour change approaches, both formal and informal.

Try to design your engagement activities, programs and initiatives in a way that you can evaluate their usefulness and effectiveness in impacting behaviour change. This will also help you demonstrate your value to key stakeholders, including funders.

Activities may include:

• teaching people to repair and maintain the life of their existing bikes (while this requires space and tools, education is vital in preventing bikes from being disposed of as ‘waste’)
• imparting bike repair and maintenance skills for students, volunteers and people engaged in community service
• encouraging individuals and corporations to donate bikes
• encouraging appropriate disposal of items that the program can’t repair or accept
• changing purchasing behaviour (for example buy second hand not new and with a limited life)
• using education resources to promote the above (for example, workshops and posters)
• attend community events to increase the awareness of your services.

Phase two: Implement program

Run an efficient program

It is important to build relationships with local donors, transfer stations, and councils – along with their waste contractors, like Cleanaway. Good partnerships can ensure abandoned bicycles are collected properly and diverted from landfill. Apartment buildings’ body corporates can also be a source of abandoned bikes. However, be cautious. You are not a junk removal service. If your organisation is limited in space, you can quickly become overrun with unusable bikes.

Different organisations have different processes for breaking down bikes. Some organisations use student volunteers to strip down all bikes. Some strip bikes prior to recycling them. Some strip the bikes to salvage useful parts or educate students.

A high volume of goods often means you need enough resources to strip and clean the bikes. Some schemes derive an income from selling parts and recycling.

Some organisations separate the bikes into:

• potential for upcycling
• parts only
• straight to waste.

Build and engage diverse communities

Consider the most appropriate platforms for your programs and whether or not you plan to target certain groups. Different demographics in a community use different media types, such as:

• email
• website
• noticeboard
• Instagram
• Facebook.

If you understand your community’s demographic profile, you can improve information about events and bicycle use so that it is accessible to groups like migrants and refugees.

Help to build a community who will support your business and help you achieve your circular economy goals. Be patient – it might take 2 or 3 years to build momentum and develop a strong organisational culture. To build a community, you can:

• provide catering for your volunteers to help retain and support your workforce
• organise pop-up events to build relationships between local council, the community and your team.

Set your team up for success

Make sure that the people who run your repair sessions have the appropriate training processes, manual or resources to do their job well.

When engaging volunteers, have clear position descriptions that outline their:

• roles
• responsibilities
• required skills.

Focus on how you can keep your volunteers engaged and enthusiastic.

You might engage volunteers and students in the dismantling and assessment processes, and have a mechanic with Cert III in Bicycle Workshop Operations to sign off on the final result. While this is not essential, it may be required by your insurance and could form part of your risk management plan.

Bicycle repair and recycle programs require knowledge of, and access to, available education materials. Be clear about who is able to use these resources in order to maintain insurance coverage.

Circular collaboration

Bicycle repair and recycle initiatives are more effective when they work together. Consider your peer bicycle repair/recycle initiatives as a supportive and informative network that can help you achieve your shared circular goals. Join the network through the Bicycle Recyclers of Australia website.

Promote collaboration with other bicycle programs. For example:

• share and use second-hand parts rather than buying new from suppliers
• help each other with consistent messaging
• share knowledge of bicycle recovery opportunities
• provide local support to broader education campaigns
• coordinate advocacy for better design and import regulations on poor quality bikes.

Phase three: Evaluate and improve

Demonstrate your value

Record your bikes sales and weigh the recycled metal and tyres to record the carbon emissions you are saving from landfill. This will help you communicate your value to funders and partners.

By collecting data on waste avoidance you can show the value of your work to key stakeholders such as the venue, community and funding bodies. This measuring and storytelling activity can help you build your community and secure funding and resources for your program.

While it may be challenging to define what you have saved from landfill, you can contribute your data to global measures and help to build a stronger story around collective impact through RepairMonitor.

Evaluate your learnings to make improvements

Share knowledge gained from repair sessions to improve the program’s future practice.

Seek feedback from your team.

You may also develop case studies for best practice.

Monitor your outcomes so that successes can be repeated and built upon. If you are selling bicycles, document your sales through your Point of Sale (POS) software.

Measure your progress by weighing the metal and tyres you have recycled.

Document what you do. You can use the data you collect to promote your services.

Instructions for documenting can be made available for your workforce online or with video. This means that bicycle recycling program volunteers and staff:

• know how to document projects
• believe in the importance of sharing knowledge with other staff to improve the future practice of the organisation.

There are free document management systems that you can use, such as Google Drive and OneDrive.

Funding and development

You need people on your team who understand finance and the obligations of running a business. Complement strong business and finance knowledge with good financial systems that help you to understand quickly how your organisation is performing so that you can respond appropriately.

All programs rely on fundraising, grants and donations, so this will become an important part of your activities.

Build diverse forms of income:

• Encourage donations from visitors. For example, provide the option for cash donations/bank transfer/card payment at events. Make t-shirts for your staff to wear with a QR code that leads visitors to the donation page of your website.
• Seek out business donations and sponsorship.
• Apply for local council grants and other local organisation grants, for example Lions Clubs.
• Keep an eye out for funding opportunities from philanthropic organisations and different levels of government.
• Teach your volunteers to write successful grant applications.

Resources

• Bicycle Recyclers of Australia
• Brainwave Bikes – source of second hand parts
• Bicycle Industries Australia – industry peak body

Case study

Other circular economy initiative guides