Where The Rubber Meets The Road

Container unload in Ghana

Donated tubes and tires are nearly as important to our shipments as the bikes themselves. All donated parts, tubes, and tires included in our containers add value to what we are sending overseas.

These tires, although used, still have miles and miles of use left on them. They will be used to replace tires on bikes that are no longer good either in the same shipment or on bikes already in use overseas. Rural mechanics value our donated tires to stock their shops and keep bikes in safe working order.

Loading tires in Virginia

Back at home, we get thousands of tubes and tires annually from individual donors, bike shops, and our corporate partnership with Capital Bikeshare (DC) and Citi Bike (NY).

Tires made for the American market are generally of good quality and durable. Many of our African partners prefer even our used tires to what they can get new imported from China. According to sources overseas, those new tubes often pop on inflation and tires wear out within 25 miles.

In the last few years, Bikes for the World has made an effort to get the word out to cyclists and bike clubs to donate used tubes and tires to us instead of adding them to our waste stream.

Bikes heading to Kenya, Africa

Tires are also very valuable to us when packing a container. To the right you can see Director Keith Oberg inside a shipping container destined for an African partner, where we send tons of used tires.

Tires are placed between columns of bikes before we place a sheet of OSB on top. The tires not only even out the board to make the next row of bikes more stable, but they also help protect brake levers and shifters on the lower row of bikes.

In Costa Rica, however, we face a major roadblock- used tires are prohibited by law from entry.  Costa Rican Customs will confiscate any used tires found in an incoming container.

Container received in Costa Rica

As you can see in this photograph, when tires are not used between the rows of bikes the OSB bends under the weight of the bikes in the container. This is why, at Bikes for the World, we take special care when prepping bikes for shipping to try to turn the handlebars in a way that will help protect components by shifting them underneath the handlebar rather than sticking up above.

This container was shipped to Costa Rica last December and contained very few spare tires. Because of the prohibition of tires in the country, we can only ship new tires in our containers. We save all new tires for Costa Rica for this purpose, but only have about a half dozen to include in every shipment.

Our next shipment to Costa Rica, being loaded this week, will contain 42 new tires donated by Kenda Tires, a Taiwanese company with its American headquarters in Reynoldsburg, OH.

Kenda has graciously supplied these new tires in commonly-used sizes (20", 24", and 26") for our partner FINCA Costa Rica. These tires will be put to good use in the local market where quality tires are difficult to come by at prices most rural Costa Ricans can afford.

The inclusion of this donation from Kenda will increase the value of this shipment to Costa Rica and prolong the life of bikes already on the ground locally. Kenda has offered to donate any surplus or discontinued product on a periodic basis to augment the contents of our shipments. The 20" and 24" tires are especially in-demand as they are not as abundantly donated to BfW.

Giving Used Bikes a Second Life

Carl Henn Memorial Ride 2011

By now you've heard us rave about the recent partnership with Dick's Sporting Goods and Bikes for the World. While this Trade Up program brought us thousands of bikes, what it also did was help Americans upgrade their rides and hopefully encouraged more bike use right here in the States.

Bikes for the World not only promotes cycling as transportation overseas, but we fully support advocacy efforts right here in the DC area too. We have participated in Bike To Work events, numerous Bike Fairs in communities and schools, and supported the Carl Henn Memorial ride in 2011.

Nick and Chris at Spokes Belle View

In fact, BfW has partnered with many local bike shops over the years who serve as Drop Off points for us year round. It is a relationship we are all proud of. We have gotten over 1,000 bikes from our local shop partners this year alone and over 1,500 last year. In addition to bike donations, shops will donate used tubes, tires, and parts that we in turn ship overseas to help mechanics there maintain the bikes we are sending.

Our relationship with bike shops is how we hope to help grow the number of people out on bikes in our area. Upgrading or fixing a bicycle is often what stands between a cyclist and the trail.

Properly maintaining a bicycle is key to keeping it running smoothly. Jill DiMauro, previous owner of Proteus in College Park, tells us dirt is often the culprit for wearing down parts prematurely. The greenest thing you can do for your bike is clean it, she says. But once the parts are worn they need to be replaced. Sometimes it just makes more sense to buy a new bike rather than fix the old one.

Keith rescuing bikes from Shady Grove

But some environmentally conscious cyclists are concerned about adding to the waste stream. Rightfully so, these used bicycles are certainly not 'waste'. In addition to bikes received at bike shops BfW also saves bikes left at recycling facilities in the area. BfW repurposed close to 2,000 bikes left at the Shady Grove Waste Transfer Station last year alone.

Larry Black, owner Mt Airy Bikes, has been recycling for years and even won the Green Shop Award a few years back. He will patch and reuse a tube until it's no longer round! Then he will cut them and use them for rubber bands or bungees. Black is a huge supporter of the work we are doing at BfW. He has been overseas on numerous occasions, both for work and fun, and he can tell you how important the bicycle can be to a family overseas, IF you can stop him from running around the shop long enough.

Recycled tube handbag

We have several key volunteers who help support the bike shops working with BfW. They pick up bikes stashed in overcrowded stock rooms and recycle rubber and metal that cannot be reused.

One of the programs we support in Ghana, The Village Bicycle Project, has actually requested our old tubes, even the ones that need patched. Tubes can be used and reused and reused; however, here locally they are often used and tossed in the trash. The quality of rubber that we have in the US is often of a higher quality than what they receive new in Africa. Our old tubes,therefore, are preferred  to brand new ones.

Donating an old bike makes room for a new one AND makes the donor feel good to find a new owner for an old friend. We hope a brand new, properly tuned bike gets folks out riding more often.

All the shops we work with are supplied with receipts and can not only take a bike donation and financial donation to BfW but they can issue a receipt at the time of the donation. We appreciate all the work they do for us knowing it takes time out of their day and space out of their shops. That's just how important this program is to many of them.

Many shops also serve as collection points for our regular seasonal collections as well. Bikenetic, Bike Doctor, Race Pace, Capitol Hill Bikes, and REI have all sponsored collections in the past year. And many of them share our updates online to their customers. A list of all our current shop partners is available on our website.

And the Dick's Sporting Good Partnership was just plain amazingly awesome! See for yourself: