Re-cycling made easy

Lately I have been thinking where I'm heading with my dissertation, It has gone grown from carbon emissions to a full blown comparative study in Scandinavian and UK attitudes towards the environment. The difficulty that faces me is pin pointing exactly what I'm going to base it on-emissions, waste, pollution, recycling...? So today I got up and revisited an old idea that i thought of whilst cycling to work everyday last year. Just on the outskirts of town is a cycle charity shop named 're-cycle'. When i came across the charity, it's guiding principle is to donate old bicycles to African school children and farm workers. This idea is on the whole was a good one-recycling the UK's old bikes, but for me It just didn't make sense. The irony lies in that African countries along with parts of S.Asia will be the first to feel the impacts of climate change brought on by ourselves in Europe, China and America. Surely re-cycle could sell some of its bikes to keep afloat its diminishing charity? Apparently not.

According to Eurostat, one of the biggest producers of carbon emissions in the UK are cars. Considering that most drivers use their cars to commute, an easy solution is to push all car drivers out of their seats and on to a saddles-simple. Surely this was the grand Idea of all those in the Defra offices? Once again, apparently not. Whilst working I struggled to find a second hand bike in Colchester, a brand spanking new one (using 20kg of raw materials to make) would have been simple-straight to the cycle shop (or Argos) and pay £80 for a bike that would last a year. I wanted a second hand one, theres thousands out there-but could i find one?! No. I eventually found an old man in Wivenhoe selling second hand bikes from his garage. £25 bought me a 1983 raleigh-sturmey archer 3 gear town bike. I think the issue that annoyed me the most in this never ending quest was the sarcastic answers I would receive from bike shops when asking if they knew of any 2nd hand shops.

Anyway back to today: I visited Sue from re-cycle and asked if they were now selling restored bicycles to the public. The great news was that they were! Yes! Fantastic! A brilliant move in government funding! When Sue showed me around the warehouse, there were hundreds of old royal mail bikes, raliegh 3 speeds, dozens of dutch town bikes and then there, right at the back-9 bikes up for sale. (Coincidentally 3 students came into the re-cycle office whilst I was there, all left empty handed as none of the bikes fit to ride).

My reason for going to re-cycle was simple, I knew that the visit would re-ignite my anger and frustration with the situation we are in today. Lately I may have become to involved with the law books, and what the ECJ or Commission has to say about climate change-but these small things like second hand bikes-they're the most important (an easy!) steps that we can all individually take. But if the facilities aren't there to support us then how will we achieve the 20% reduction of carbon emissions?