Bit of a socks n sandals question but can you chuck old brake cables in the domestic recycling bin? I guess not for cassette’s and chains – they’re stainless steel I think. What about other bits?

I just have a seperate bike metals bin thats dumped at the tip when full.

all recyclable I would say. Can’t think of a single part that is not.

Grips won’t be?

The plastic bits?

Ceramic bearings unlikely.

all recyclable I would say. Can’t think of a single part that is not.

I don’t think anything PTFE is, which probably rules out cable outers.

But what isn’t economical can usually be sent to be burnt as fuel, then the metals recovered afterward.

Plastic is recycled is it not?

oh OK, so just pile it all in then. I wonder what happens to old carbon fibre…

Barely worth recycling CFRP. It costs more energy to burn the resin out and then, what do you do with the fibres? Some are being turned into chopped strand fibre, but even those offer little savings over genuine in terms of cost and suffer a substantial performance knockdown.

Do items always have to be recycled to be of further use? Reuse or repair then reuse could be argued as extending the life of a product and the embodied resources more efficiently…

Barely worth recycling CFRP. It costs more energy to burn the resin out and then, what do you do with the fibres? Some are being turned into chopped strand fibre, but even those offer little savings over genuine in terms of cost and suffer a substantial performance knockdown.

Fair enough points, but CF frames are probably the easiest to repair when compared with steel/Al/Ti so a composite frame can have a much longer working life rather than just being binned after a little dint…

Fair enough points, but CF frames are probably the easiest to repair when compared with steel/Al/Ti so a composite frame can have a much longer working life rather than just being binned after a little dint..

And yet the reality doesn’t seem to be so…how many manufacturers just send a new frames for warranty claims and ask for the old one to be destroyed?

Most of the plastics will be hard to recycle, mainly as they are black so it’s hard to automatically sort them.

No idea how the sort different metals in an assembly but things like wheels will have aluminium rims and hubs, steel spokes, brass nipples, quite a mashup that are less straightforward to recycle.

And yet the reality doesn’t seem to be so…how many manufacturers just send a new frames for warranty claims and ask for the old one to be destroyed?

I guess that’s the difference between a warranty job and a crash repair. With their own money I suspect most people would go down the repair route.

tjagain – Member
Plastic is recycled is it not?

Only really stuff you can melt. PTFE melts at a very high temp so isn’t usually recycled, it’s also not used an awful lot so its unlikely to be economical.

No idea how the sort different metals in an assembly but things like wheels will have aluminium rims and hubs, steel spokes, brass nipples, quite a mashup that are less straightforward to recycle.

Same way you recycle a car, it goes through a giant shredder, then the resulting mess gets passed under a big magnet to draw off the steel.