Economics of Bicycle Recycling and Reselling

[Chris S]

I work once a week in a workshop where we repair donated bikes for refugees. It's organised through the local council, who allow us to use a school cellar as a workshop and donate financial help quarterly. When bikes are worthy they get sold on eBay to help buy new parts.
We say if we would be happy enough to ride a bike, it's ok for someone else.
The difference is of course that we don't sell the bikes, there is no garantie and if anything does break they bring it back and it gets fixed again.
Nobody gets paid, it's just fun and nice to help.

There's a similar project in the UK.
https://thebikeproject.co.uk/

 

[Andy in Germany]

I work once a week in a workshop where we repair donated bikes for refugees. It's organised through the local council, who allow us to use a school cellar as a workshop and donate financial help quarterly. When bikes are worthy they get sold on eBay to help buy new parts.
We say if we would be happy enough to ride a bike, it's ok for someone else.
The difference is of course that we don't sell the bikes, there is no garantie and if anything does break they bring it back and it gets fixed again.
Nobody gets paid, it's just fun and nice to help.

Ours began like that and then developed to a part of the larger organisation: we're owned 50% by the local authority so they send people struggling to find work (for @Neilka: people getting Harz 4), but we have to sell some bikes because the gov't support isn't 100 of our costs so we have to make a profit.