City group hopes you’ll donate your bike instead of kicking it to the curb this Giveaway Weekend

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This article was published 07/09/2018 (2579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kettles, clothes, toaster ovens, furniture, books and more will be piled on curbs and lawns Saturday and Sunday, free for the taking as part of city’s biannual Giveaway Weekend.

Pat Krawec, co-executive director of the WRENCH (Winnipeg Repair Education and Cycling Hub), hopes bicycles will not be among the items in the pile.

He is attempting to educate Winnipeggers about the benefits of taking bikes that have outlived their usefulness — whether they’re old, broken or have been outgrown — to one of the city’s three 4R Depots, rather than leaving them on the curb.

The depots — located at 1777 Brady Rd., 1120 Pacific Ave. and 429 Panet Rd. — forward all bikes to the WRENCH, a non-profit charity at 1057 Logan Ave. that offers programs for schoolchildren and adults in bike repair, teaches people to build their own bicycles, and offers off-site tune-ups in the community. Services are by donation on a sliding scale, or can be paid for with volunteer hours at the shop.

It also sells refurbished bicycles at its retail location at The Forks.

“Why is doing the right thing sometimes the wrong thing?” Krawec said. “Manitobans are generous, it’s true. But putting your bike at the curb can actually act as a buffer for bike theft in two ways.”

First, when unwanted bikes are regularly left out for anyone to take — whether it’s during a Giveaway Weekend or not — it offers thieves plausible deniability.

“Another way it really promotes bike theft is it devalues the bicycle,” Krawec said. “People say, ‘Well, they’re not important. People leave them lying around so it’s no big deal if I take one.’ That really contributes greatly to the problem.”

Krawec said the current methamphetamine abuse epidemic in Winnipeg has led to a spike in bike theft. “Because we have an addiction crisis, those people are very vulnerable, and they’re going to be preyed upon by dealers and the people who run chop shops — they’re the people who profit (from theft).”

With nine community bike shops — including the Bike Dump (631 Main St.) and Co-Op Vélo-Cité (190 Avenue de la Cathedrale) — Winnipeg is an international leader in this kind of programming, with more outlets than Los Angeles or Montreal.

The city is also the first jurisdiction in Canada to forge an agreement with community bike shops to handle recycling.

“One hundred per cent of the children’s bikes that go in (to the depots) get reused,” Krawec said. “And about 70 per cent of the adult bikes get reused or at least sorted for parts… A bike for the city is worth about 70 cents in dirty scrap. A bike for a community bike project is worth a minimum of $25 per unit.

“It’s an instant way to add value into your community.”

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @dedaumier