“Bike Back” is an innovative bicycle recycling project which collects donations of old, unwanted and abandoned bikes otherwise destined for landfill and takes them to a workshop inside the secure area of HMP Bristol
Life Cycle teaches prisoners the skills to repair and refurbish the broken bikes; giving them the chance to get out of their cells, spend their time doing something meaningful, learn valuable employability skills and work towards gaining qualifications. The fixed bikes are then quality checked and then sold-on at an affordable process to local people on low incomes.
Once returned to serviceable condition by the prisoners, fixed bikes are quality checked by volunteers from the local community, tutored by Life Cycle’s mechanics, and then sold on at affordable prices. This helps offer local people on low incomes an affordable way to start cycling as a low-cost, healthy alternative to expensive car / public transport use.
Helping the local Community
“Bike Back” has refurbished over 1,300 unwanted, broken and abandoned bicycles, getting them back on the road and into use. All money from bike sales goes straight back into the scheme – however, the charity is not yet self-sustaining.
So an application was made to The Naturesave Trust for their support. Many of the bikes received as donations, arrive in very poor condition, each part has to be individually disassembled and renovated to make it work again. The Trust’s grant enabled Life Cycle UK to purchase new parts to aid this process.