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The Milwaukee Bicycle Collective has a working relationship with UW-Milwaukee for donations. This past semester break we received about 50 bikes that were abandoned for at least 6 months. We got their attention by cold calling, saying essentially that you got em, dont want em, we need em and the campus police were more than willing to comply. State schools have a fairly rigid acquisition process, but we have had more success with the state school than our private college (Marquette). Most importantly though, in accepting the donations, you agree to accept all of the bikes they are unloading and most bikes happen to be utter shit. Worse than what we would consider our worst bikes (consider the detritus of seven years of donations) we have ended up recycling a good portion of them.
Jim On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 4:29 PM, Erik Stockmeier eriks@therecyclery.orgwrote:
Are there any groups out there with strong partnerships with local municipalities or campuses to collect abandoned bicycles? I know the Recyclery (Chicago) and many other groups certainly pick up donations from police departments and the like, but we have a number of volunteers and a campus environmental group working on setting up a structured collection program and are looking for ways to proceed. Do you, for example, have a specific notice or flyer you attach to bikes? We are thinking of something that says "hello, this bike looks abandoned. if it is yours, you can fix it up at the recyclery. Otherwise it will be removed..."
Anyhow, just wondering if anyone has already done this. Thanks for your help!
Erik @ The Recyclery (Chicago)
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