According to the National Bicycle Retailers Association, somewhere around 20 million bicycles are sold in America each year, resulting in about $6 billion passing hands. The current US population is just about 300 million. So even if everyone in the country only owned one bicycle at a time, the entire stock would turn over every 15 years.

This is great news for folks who sell bicycles, at least for SOME folks who sell bicycles. About 75% of bicycles are sold through mass market merchants like Walmart. The rest of the sales are split up amongst sporting goods stores and specialty bicycle retailers (i.e. your friendly neighborhood bike shop). The bikes sold in bike shops tend to be of better quality, and thus, sell for more money. However, any “mom-and-pop” bike shop owner will tell you that the markup on a bicycle is low, and thus, even though they sell bikes for more money than the super-stores, they aren’t necessarily making more money.

So, crunching the numbers tells us that about 15 million bikes that are sold each year are “department store bikes.” No offense to the manufacturers of those bikes, but they are not of the best quality. This is in part because they are being sold for less than $150 in almost all cases (typically $70-$120), but also because they are assembled by people making minimum wage who may have never touched a wrench or a bicycle before in their life.

Predictably, those 15 million sub-par bikes are not ridden for very long before they enter the waste stream and are replaced with the next generation. So, though there aren’t any statistics on it, I think that I’ve just illustrated that just about every year, this country probably throws away about 15 million bicycles.

That's a lot of metal and plastic.

If you’ve lived in Madison any period of time, you’ve seen a bike or ten on the curb. Some are rusty. Others have a wheel that looks as though the previous owner tried to do origami with it (how this happens, and on such a regular basis, I do not understand). Others seem to be victims of the annual moving ritual of August 15th. On the UW campus alone, about 400 bikes are abandoned each year.

You may not be aware of this, but there is a sizeable group of individuals in Madison who make it their duty to try and save as many of these abandoned bikes as possible. I’m one of that sick little lot. We see them and we do our best to justify bringing them home with us. Like a little lost puppy. If circumstances (read: spouses) prevent us from saving them, we tell our friends. “Mid-70s Schwinn at the corner of Jenifer and Few at 8am this morning,” we pass on. This is how I got MY first trash picked bike. My buddy Chuck knew I wanted to rebuild an old Schwinn to learn how a bicycle worked, and within days he’d located one for my pickup. I now make a hobby out of saving old abandoned bikes and refurbishing them. Every so often, I meet someone who needs a bike but says they can’t afford one. And if I like them, I give them one of mine.

But the sad truth is, like all the little lost puppies of the world, there are more little lost bikes than the good Samaritans of Madison can pick off of the curb. I’m happy to be part of an organization that does its best to save another 200 or so each year, Wheels for Winners. All we ask is that kids do 15 hours of community service or read and complete a book report on 5 books, and we’ll happily give them one of Dane County’s little lost puppy bikes. A crew of dedicated volunteers refurbishes every single one and then turns them over to the kids with a helmet, lock, and bike license. Indeed, the volunteers basically rebuild each bike from the bottom up, making most of them far better bikes than they probably were when purchased new from aforementioned department stores. It’s our hope that the kids end up better off too.

Which brings me to this conclusion, even the poorest quality of bicycle is better than no bicycle at all. It is a crime that we sell 15 million poorly built bikes each year, bikes whose poor quality and assembly likely turn lots of people off of bicycling. Then, those same bikes get thrown away. And since I know that 30 people trying really hard all year can only save and turn around about 200, I’m betting that most of those abandoned bikes are going into landfills. With just a little bit of care, even those sub-par bikes could be made to be better, and to be used by someone who needs them.

We throw away so many things in this country without a second thought to the impact on the world around us. And we don’t give a second thought to manufacturing things meant to be thrown away rather than preserved. Since I’m one of those crazy people who think that bicycles can make the world a better place, it truly makes me sad to know that, as far as the majority of our country is concerned, a bicycle is a disposable product.

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