Students seek abandoned bikes to recycle

OBERLIN, Ohio (AP) — Eschewing fuel-guzzling cars apparently wasn’t green enough for bicycle-loving students at Oberlin College.

Armed with bolt cutters and hacksaws, students and campus employees scour campus at the end of each school year to round up abandoned bicycles and recycle them.

Oberlin’s assistant safety and security director Marge Burton says up to 200 bikes are left behind by departing students each May. Students say unlocked bikes are often “borrowed” and sometimes never make it back to their original owners.

“This is a town with more bikes than almost any other town anywhere,” said Liz Burgess, an alumna of the college who runs the city’s merchants association. “So it would make sense that we would have more abandoned bikes than just about anywhere else.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Oberlin ranked 12th in the United States in percentage of residents who commute to work or school on a bicycle.

The bikes end up at the campus bicycle co-op, which serves as a recycling center. Student Sean O’Brien of East Lansing, Mich., is a volunteer mechanic at the co-op.

“Some people just think it’s kind of a hassle to bring [the bicycles] home,” O’Brien said.

The center is also home to bicycles collected by campus security and city police. If the bikes cannot be returned to owners or sold at an auction, officials send them to the co-op.

There they are spruced up and reused, with some donated to city youths who need them.

“I don’t think bikes in general are valued as much as they should be,” O’Brien said. “It’s a dream of mine to not have any bikes laying around out there and have one for everyone who wants one.”