Recycle Your Cycle
ReCycle Your Cycle is our award winning initiative to repair bikes sent for scrap to Galway City Council’s waste depot. We are deeply committed to the circular economy, and ReCycle Your Cycle is our flagship circular economy work.
Around 20 bikes each week are sent for scrap in Galway City. While recycling the metal might sound environmentally friendly, the reality is that scrap metal is generally shipped offshore for a carbon-intensive recycling process. By taking bikes out of the waste stream and returning them to use, we are creating a useful product: an affordable, fossil-fuel-free means of transport for students and low income people.
Even better, we use the bikes to generate hundreds of hours of training for our bike mechanic trainees, who are participants in the Tús scheme for long term unemployed people.
Best of all, the money we raise by selling the bikes funds our community work, like our DIY workshops where anyone can learn to fix their bikes from our experienced mechanics.
In 2019, ReCycle Your Cycle won a place on the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Academy, going on to win the top award for the Connacht region.
