Submitted by Jessica Haskell on Tue, 2021-04-27 16:31
Back in 2016 St John’s College began donating cycles to Recycle Your Cycle under the coordination of one of our Senior Porters, Mark Nelligan.
Recycle Your Cycle is a charity working with prisons around the UK. They provide meaningful work, and cycle maintenance training and qualifications, to support prisoners in their rehabilitation and future work prospects. Donated bikes are refurbished by prisoners and then supplied to UK charities such as Barnardo’s, enabling them to raise additional funds for their cause. The scheme not only offers high-value items to charity shops, but reduces waste to landfill and provides real benefits to prisoners across the UK.
St John’s College donates approximately 50 cycles per year to Recycle Your Cycle. Donated bikes are usually those previously owned by students who either no longer need the bike or who cannot be traced (rest assured all reasonable steps to trace the owners are taken!). We are proud to support the work of this little-known but fabulous charity, and are immensely thankful to Mark for his commitment in tracing bike owners and organising collections (pictured below).
According to Mark Abrahams, Managing Director of Recycle Your Cycle, the charity were refurbishing approximately 300 cycles a month before Covid-19. Currently, the refurb workshops are closed due to the pandemic but it is hoped that these will reopen soon to the benefit of both people and planet.
Written by Vicky Jeffries, lead member of the St John’s College Green Impact team
