Plans afoot for Bristol bike recycling scheme

Bristol City Council, Life Cycle UK, SOFA Project and HMP Bristol have announced details of a joint bike recycling scheme, as part of Greater Bristol's Cycling City programme.

The project will establish a large-scale bicycle recycling scheme, equipping Bristol prison workshop with bike maintenance work stations and other specialist facilities so that large numbers of bikes and bike parts can be recycled and refurbished.

The project will provide low cost, good quality bikes to communities across Greater Bristol.

The project will also provide productive employment, training and qualifications for prisoners at HMP Bristol.

The bike recycling project is expected to start selling bicycles from a number of city outlets in the Autumn.

Poppy Brett, Strategy Co-ordinator for Life Cycle UK, said: "Life Cycle has been recycling bikes in Bristol for a number of years on small scale, and we are very much looking forward to this opportunity to expand the scheme, making many more low cost bikes available to the people of Bristol.  As soon as the workshop is set up, we will be taking donations of bikes from the public and hope to have the first batch ready for sale as soon as possible"

Peter Noonan, Deputy Governor of HMP Bristol said: "Our contribution of facilities, premises and labour costs, will allow this project to be financially viable. We are keen to develop this project as a long-term training initiative for our prisoners. It is something we would like to see replicated across the country - because it trains and provides productive work for prisoners, which reduces the chances of them re-offending after release, and allows us to give something back to the wider community in Bristol."

Julian Williams, Director of SOFA Project said: “Cycling City's bike recycling enterprise fits very well with SOFA Project's ethos of re-using resources in an affordable way.  We're excited about helping Life Cycle UK with the logistics and retail elements of this great scheme. We bring lots of experience of working with the criminal justice sector, too - I'm sure we can help many HMP Bristol prisoners on their journey just as we have dozens from HMP Leyhill over the past few years”.

This scheme will complement the range of other projects in the area where you can get a good value bike, or donate one you no longer need.