The next time you visit your local tip or recycling centre, take a note of the bicycles lay waiting to be dumped into landfill. You may find that most have one thing in common – they’re children’s bikes and they’re probably there because the child that once owned the bicycle has grown up!
Unfortunately, the days of parents buying a bike that is designed for children a few years older than them, are now becoming the exception (“You’ll grow into it” we were told!). This is for a number of reasons, not least because there’s a greater range of bicycles now available to children.
Discarding shoes, clothes and baby items as a child grows is one thing, but a whole bicycle is on a different level, especially as the bicycle was probably only used for a few months or years. The obvious environmental impact of landfill is obvious, but the impact of manufacturing of all of these bicycles is huge, with all of the metal and rubber involved in creating a modern bicycle.
It is certainly easier these days for people to sell their items on website like Gumtree and Ebay, but one bicycle company has another idea. In a radical step towards combating the waste generated by children’s bicycles, Isla Bikes, one of the world’s largest children’s bike manufacturer, has a plan.
Their ambitious Imagine Project allows parents to rent children’s bicycles instead of buying them. Once the child has grown too big for the bike, it can then be returned to Isla Bikes and refurbished to be used again.
It is refreshing to see companies taking a stance on environmental concerns. We actively encourage young people to take up cycling for all of the health, wellbeing and environmental benefits, but rarely do we give a thought to the environmental impact of buying several bikes in our lifetime, especially for our children.
In a recent Guardian article about the scheme, Emily Chappell points out a potential problem however, “will parents really be happy for their children to ride a bike that is effectively secondhand? Won’t they consider it safer to buy them one that’s brand new?”.
Apparently this is where the real genius of the project lies, as pointed out by its’ creator, Isla Rowntree. By enrolling onto this scheme, manufacturers will be forced to create better quality products that will last years of being used and recycled. This will of course also bring bigger profits for manufacturers in the long run, the better their products are, the more people they can rent to and for longer.
We don’t know if this addresses little Johnny getting bullied for getting a secondhand bike at Christmas when all of his mates have a new one (and the ensuing tantrums), but this is a secondary concern in the big scheme of things.
Rowntree and Isla Bikes have a vision to change the culture behind how parents buy bicycles in order to benefit the environment and raise awareness of our diminishing natural resources, and I think that’s incredible.
So little Johnny will have to deal with it I’m afraid.
Written by Tom Shooter (@tbshooter)
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