Greener Bike Practices

We have a community bicycle workshop in the area. I donate any unwanted but still usable parts to them as well as help collect donated used bicycles. Anything they can't reuse gets sorted and sold for recycling. Some items can be re-purposed such as using the back half of a diamond frame with seat post and seat to make a shop stool or cutting unpatchable or excessively patched inner tubes into rubber bands. Even local artists sometimes get in on the act searching the scrap bins for raw materials.

Biodegradable, non-toxic or low toxicity cleaners, degreasers and solvents are the rule at both the community shop and my home shop. I allow the solids to settle out and run my used degreaser through a coffee filter so I can reuse it a couple of times. I have two containers of degreaser. The fresher degreaser is used for final cleaning and light degreasing. As the degreaser gets darker, I move it to another container used for heavy degreasing and soaking. This extends the useful life of the degreaser and assures that it is completely spent before disposal.

Thanks for the great info. Good degreaser suggestion.

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by Myosmith [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

We have a community bicycle workshop in the area. I donate any unwanted but still usable parts to them as well as help collect donated used bicycles. Anything they can't reuse gets sorted and sold for recycling. Some items can be re-purposed such as using the back half of a diamond frame with seat post and seat to make a shop stool or cutting unpatchable or excessively patched inner tubes into rubber bands. Even local artists sometimes get in on the act searching the scrap bins for raw materials.

Biodegradable, non-toxic or low toxicity cleaners, degreasers and solvents are the rule at both the community shop and my home shop. I allow the solids to settle out and run my used degreaser through a coffee filter so I can reuse it a couple of times. I have two containers of degreaser. The fresher degreaser is used for final cleaning and light degreasing. As the degreaser gets darker, I move it to another container used for heavy degreasing and soaking. This extends the useful life of the degreaser and assures that it is completely spent before disposal.