Over 12 years I don't think we've turned any away at our door, but it
can certainly be an issue. For instance, our partner org. once went
with a truck to pick up about 60 bikes and came back with 20, having
told the donors to take the other 40 directly to scrap.
The two metal recyclers here want seats and tires off at the very
least, so we have to do that. We also remove the pedals if we can,
as they snag everything when trying to pull the scrap pile apart and
drag stuff up to the truck (our scrap pile, which volume-wise is
about the size of a panel truck, is in our basement,)
I too would like to hear how other orgs. handle this. We find that
newbie volunteers seem to love taking bikes apart, so we're able to
cope with it.
Now, crappy little kids bikes, that's another issue... Currently
we're leaving some in our back alley, hoping they'll disappear (and
they often do) before we bring them inside. Fortunately our landlord
does not seem to mind this.
Mark Rehder - General Manager re-Cycles Bicycle Co-op http://re-cycles.ca
On 12-Aug-09, at 8:15 PM, Urban Bike Project Wilmington, DE wrote:
hey folks,
a moral or social dilemma: when your shop accepts donations of used
bikes, but you're already filled to the gills with hundreds of
bikes that may or may not ever get fixed up, how do you begin to
turn away donations that are really not worth the space? or do
you? just looking for some suggestions of how other shops have
dealt with this issue. it gets to the point where we don't have
the time, space, or man-power to strip down all those
pieces-of-crap even to send to the scrap yard, but now that people
know that we accept used bikes, it's hard to know how to say no.thanks!
sarah
Urban Bike Project of Wilmington -a 501(c)3 non-profit bike shop- 1908 N. Market Street (entrance is in the parking lot behind the
building) Wilmington, DE 19802Hours: Thursday 6:30-9:00 Saturday 1:00-4:00
Visit us online at http://urbanbikeproject.org