Junkyard Bikes Journey Around the World

Article by: Karla Zimmerman, May 2006

Not so Lee Ravenscroft, founder of Chicago-based Working Bikes Cooperative (WBC). He looks at it and thinks, 'That could help feed a family in Tanzania.'

Or help a team of cyclists ride 51,500km (32,000 miles) from Chicago to Tokyo via Guatemala, Kazakhstan and quite a few places in between. But that story comes later.

Ravenscroft and his colleagues have been trawling local landfills and scrap yards for junked bikes since 2001, when WBC was formed. The group's mission is simple: find discarded bikes, fix them, sell some, and use the proceeds to ship the rest to developing countries. WBC now recycles 10,000 bikes annually.

'We're like a mini United Nations, but addressing global issues on a grassroots level'

Almost every week volunteers bring a haul - large or small, rusty or clean, flat tires or no tires - to WBC's cavernous warehouse, where a festooning of bikes hangs from the ceiling and hundreds more swell up from the floor, punctuated by piles of wheels, rims, handlebars and frames.

It is here that a team of 50 volunteer mechanics perform their alchemy, refurbishing the vehicles to safe operating condition. On average, they convert bits and pieces from four scrap-yard bikes to make three 'new' bikes. Of these, 40% get sold in WBC's storefront to Chicago's citizenry for the bargain price of $40. These profits then enable WBC to send the remaining bikes and parts to villages in Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America - places where a bicycle can make a huge difference in a family's economic situation by helping them get a job, bring home food or carry goods to market.

WBC chooses its partner organisations carefully, focusing on those that make creative use of the bikes for sustainable projects. Take Guatemala's MayaPedal, for instance. They've concocted bike-powered grain grinders, water pumps and corn-dehuskers for rural communities, thus providing an ongoing, reliable energy source in places where electricity is scarce. In Arusha, Tanzania, the Global Alliance for Africa provides AIDS orphans with vocational training so they learn to fix the bikes or modify them into cargo carriers, and then sell them for income. WBC's other partners are in Cuba, Nicaragua, Peru, Ghana, Angola and Zambia.

As he prepares to send a shipment of 450 bikes to Cuba, Ravenscroft looks around his jam-packed warehouse and smiles. 'We love broken bikes,' he says, and all the possibilities they offer.

Embarking on the Ultimate Road Test

Stephan Wanger, a long-time WBC volunteer, shares the sentiment. And he's willing to prove it by taking one of WBC's scrap-yard specials for a long ride - a 51,500km ride, to be exact, all the way around the world.

On 28 May, 2006, Wanger and a team of five other riders will set out from Chicago on the 15-month Continental Pedal that will take them through the USA, south through Central and South America, by plane to Portugal, and then onward through Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan, China, South Korea and Japan. They'll fly home via Tokyo in August 2007.

The group's goal is to raise awareness and funds for WBC and three other non-profit organisations (Doctors Without Borders, National Federation of the Blind and Chicagoland Bicycle Federation), and to promote the benefits of a healthy, sustainable and responsible global community. Throughout their journey, the riders will stop and visit the organisations that are using WBC's vehicles, including MayaPedal, as well as seek out new partners for WBC. Half the group will be making the trek on recycled bikes themselves.

'We love broken bikes,' he says, and all the possibilities they offer.

The riders stretch in age from 14 to 53 years, and represent a vast range of backgrounds: one is legally blind and the mother of seven children, one is an oil-field worker, one is a vegetarian art student, and another is an attorney. They hail from Norway, Germany and Mexico, in addition to points throughout the USA.

'We're like a mini United Nations, but addressing global issues on a grassroots level,' Wanger says. 'We want to show people that if we can work together and meet this challenge, anyone can.'

The team will ride 120km (75 miles) to 160km (100 miles) per day, resting every seventh day. They'll pedal mostly along two-lane highways, carrying their own tents and cooking gear. They've been training for months. Wanger, in particular, is no stranger to this sort of endurance trip: he cycled from Chicago to Mexico in 2004.

Visit the website www.aspiretoinspire.org for details on the team's route, blogs from the road and donation information - or to host the team as they ride through your country.