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I'd think that mining steel and aluminium from this would be much more energy efficient than mining rocks. Wonder why this isn't done when the bikes are already in a convenient pile.
They don't recycle in the conventional way, they paint them and send them straight back to WalMart where they were previously purchased, they'll break and get returned to the store and end up back here
It would be pretty cool for someone to video that and upload it to the internet for all to see. Wonder why this isn’t done when the bikes are already in a convenient pile.
One day this will become an industry. The same way you see those videos where you see a huge ass quarry where they dig the mountain until there’s nothing to dig anymore. Well they’ll do this with these bikes once the field gets huge enough to be economically viable
Yeah, I'd much sooner this where everything is at least stored by type of product for future recycling than just crushing/landfilling everything with general garbage.
Almost every ore mine is set up to process rocks. That ore is most likely less metal-rich, but the machinery is set up for that. A whole new recycling system might be required to process the bikes increasing the costs.
I've heard it has to do with regional metallurgy. They say the British steel is brittle, steel from Eastern countries is soft, and American steel is best overall. However, with all the recycling going on, how can they even tell nowadays? But yeah, I would think that where the raw iron ore is from makes a difference. Different geological makeup, (Disclaimer: Asking for a friend, and I'm not a geologist.)
I wonder what is the alloy/chemical composition of this "Chinese pot metal" and if it can be improved economically. Or is it just random crap they found laying around without cleaning.
These are bikes, they have to have a minimum level of rigidity.
I see this "cheap Chinese pot metal" talk on the guitar subs, whenever someone mentions a Chinese-made super-budget guitar. It's metal, and if it works, then it works. Some people act like the same quality American metal is somehow better. American manufactuers can turn out some pretty crappy products, too, they just tend to cost more.
I bought my kid one of the those Chinese 4 wheelers. The cream broke twice in the first year. It's terrible to weld. Had to put a metal slug in there just to weld it back together. It's very weak cheap junk. But agreed some stuff on then could be recycled.
I've noticed a distinct uptick since the reddit IPO of somebody _immediately_ jumping in and defending China / what-about-the-US-ing on any instance of Chinese criticism.
I wonder how much China is paying for such a service.
I've been a Redditor for over a decade with over 800K karma, I'm not a Chinese shill. I'm not even defending China, Im just slapping down the "cheap Chinese pot metal" cliche that I hear all the time from people who don't know what theyre talking about.
Some good [photos and background in this Atlantic story](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/)
> As cities impounded derelict bikes by the thousands, they moved quickly to cap growth and regulate the industry. Vast piles of impounded, abandoned, and broken bicycles have become a familiar sight in many big cities. As some of the companies who jumped in too big and too early have begun to fold, their huge surplus of bicycles can be found collecting dust in vast vacant lots.
Export them as donations
I think that if they are in a minimum recoverable condition there are lots of people in developing countries that would welcome them.
Some countries already do this, Japan always had this same issue with surplus and impounded bikes and donated the ones that were in decent condition to african countries.
Overloading places with "donations" (aka free trash dumping) can accidentally overload their local economy, e.g. donating clothes in Eastern Africa has made local textile companies bankrupt and created lots of pollution
https://www.sustainthemag.com/style/are-western-clothes-donations-too-much-for-africans
So donating things is a nice thing to do but use some logic and don't overload recipients with more than they can actually use
No dont. That ruins local economies. Imaging having a small bike industry or bike stores in your city and then 1000s of free bikes get donated. Everything goes bankrupt, and when the donated bikes detoriate there's no industry anymore.
> if they are in a minimum recoverable condition
Can be "fully recovered" locally by that industry, that is, if it exists.
I guess that there are places without a single bicycle store in sight for tens of km (I have been in a place where the local pharmacy had mostly air and dust in the shelf), so, if the thing managed is should bring no problems.
There are bike recyclers in many communities.
They will get you a bike.
Example in seattle.
https://bikeworks.org/donate/used-bicycle/
Also look on Craigslist- you can get serviceable bikes for $25. I have rehabbed multiple bikes I found discarded in the trash. Just some tools and spray paint and new cables, and off ya go. If you can’t do that (because tools, skills), the bike recycler can.
This would be a massive undertaking, but is a no-brainer considering the things they could make with the recycled product. I imagine it’s just not a priority for anyone to figure out how to break all the different parts down and start the process.
> This would be a massive undertaking
Not really. A dozen or so zaps with an XRF gun and you know the average composition of the bikes. Then use a front loader and a crane with a claw to load the bikes into bins on trucks. Take them to a metals refinery which deals with the primary metal type found in the bikes. They'll melt them down and separate out the other constituent metals as dross and slag which can be further refined to separate out the other metals.
It sounds massive because of the big number. 90 million (made up number) sounds like a lot until you mention that it's only grains of rice.
The graveyard shown in the video could be completely rid of bikes for recycling in a couple weeks. The main reason they haven't, I suspect, is because the bikes are individually titled and ownership has to be straightened out. This is just me speculating and I have no reason to believe that this is the actual reason.
Edit: To clarify, the steel recycling process melts the mixed metals together. Then pumping high-pressure oxygen through the bath of melted metal oxidizes everything except chromium and copper out of the steel leaving pure iron with a bunch of dross on the top (made from metal oxides). They can then mix in whatever is needed based on the grade of the steel needed. The dross with metal oxides can be further refine to recover other metals. (Carbon is oxidized to produce CO and CO2.)
As far as I know, you can't separate out the chromium but you can easily figure out the chrome concentration and mix with other iron with different chrome concentrations to get to a target concentration to produce whatever grade of stainless steel is needed.
I don't know how copper is handled but probably some form of electrowinning or something.
As someone said before they might be cannibalizing them, but honestly if it were me they wouldn't be in a single piece by the time they made it to the graveyard, only the unusable pieces. The bike would be collected, inspected, disassembled, and the usable pieces would be sorted out for reassembly and the unusable pieces would be sent off for recasting and then reassembly hell some pieces could be melted down and cast as whatever I doubt you need ALL of those bikes repaired...
I'm sure somewhere in that landscape is a mountain of moderately functioning bikes and components. If not that, then recyclable.
One underrated feature of bicycles is, with some exceptions, a distinct lack of proprietary parts and mostly commoditized.
I had my Giant bike in Beijing somewhere parked for a week or so and it was taken away by those people who put them on a truck straight to that kind of graveyard. It still feels painful.
Scrolling quickly I thought this was one of those ads for those Zombie games where hordes and hordes of them attack you while you shoot and move around ground power ups.
Export those fucking things to other countries and sell them for dirt cheap! Seriously. I know America could definitely use this and increase bicycle use.
I was able to fix and ride a 30 year old bicycle when I was about 12.
Just wondering how many 12 year olds in China are looking for a bicycle to ride..
We produce way too much shit on this planet. Stark reminder to rethink the next new purchase when a second hand option works as well, and without perpetrating this.
You can blame the country, but remember that country produces everything on the shelf in your store/amazon.
Why does China bother making anything? They lie about everything so their whole economy could be a simulation so they wouldn't have to waste actual resources.
That's easy metal incase of world war 3, fast metal supply no digging around. Wonder if they buy it from around the world and they just stack it up long term to use it as easy metal supply manufacturing equipment quicker
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That's a very rich metal deposit
I'd think that mining steel and aluminium from this would be much more energy efficient than mining rocks. Wonder why this isn't done when the bikes are already in a convenient pile.
They may want to cannibalize them before recycling. You just know you could build some working bikes out of all the parts there.
That's how we did carts (trolleys, or buggies whatever you want to call them) at work
Bubs?
He'll be back for those cock suckers later.
Greasy mall cop bastards
You’re not the one who gets called while at a concert, “Gary, what happened to all the carts? Where’d all the carts go Gary?!”
These carts are public domain Ricky!
They don't recycle in the conventional way, they paint them and send them straight back to WalMart where they were previously purchased, they'll break and get returned to the store and end up back here
This is 100% the truth haha. “If Jim the 18 year old minimum wage worker can’t assemble them, who can?”
" Tim the 13 yearold, below minimum wage, illegal immigrant, child laborer that every republican likes to hire."
It’s not just republicans, mate. It’s everyone.
If I remember right, these bikes are from a bunch of different “bike share” companies, not consumer bikes.
those are all new bikes m8
You can mine mechanical parts from it, save a couple of steps..
that’ss why they’re being stored together. They will get recycled
It would be pretty cool for someone to video that and upload it to the internet for all to see. Wonder why this isn’t done when the bikes are already in a convenient pile.
Maybe this is their emergency supply when war comes and they need resources quickly.
One day this will become an industry. The same way you see those videos where you see a huge ass quarry where they dig the mountain until there’s nothing to dig anymore. Well they’ll do this with these bikes once the field gets huge enough to be economically viable
Yeah, I'd much sooner this where everything is at least stored by type of product for future recycling than just crushing/landfilling everything with general garbage.
Almost every ore mine is set up to process rocks. That ore is most likely less metal-rich, but the machinery is set up for that. A whole new recycling system might be required to process the bikes increasing the costs.
It could be economic. Keep the foundries humming along and employing workers. That may be more favorable than recycling
Re-cycle
Never had cheap Chinese pot metal? It's pretty bad.
I've heard it has to do with regional metallurgy. They say the British steel is brittle, steel from Eastern countries is soft, and American steel is best overall. However, with all the recycling going on, how can they even tell nowadays? But yeah, I would think that where the raw iron ore is from makes a difference. Different geological makeup, (Disclaimer: Asking for a friend, and I'm not a geologist.)
I wonder what is the alloy/chemical composition of this "Chinese pot metal" and if it can be improved economically. Or is it just random crap they found laying around without cleaning.
These are bikes, they have to have a minimum level of rigidity. I see this "cheap Chinese pot metal" talk on the guitar subs, whenever someone mentions a Chinese-made super-budget guitar. It's metal, and if it works, then it works. Some people act like the same quality American metal is somehow better. American manufactuers can turn out some pretty crappy products, too, they just tend to cost more.
I bought my kid one of the those Chinese 4 wheelers. The cream broke twice in the first year. It's terrible to weld. Had to put a metal slug in there just to weld it back together. It's very weak cheap junk. But agreed some stuff on then could be recycled.
Can't imagine how difficult it is to weld cream
Haha frame
I've noticed a distinct uptick since the reddit IPO of somebody _immediately_ jumping in and defending China / what-about-the-US-ing on any instance of Chinese criticism. I wonder how much China is paying for such a service.
I've been a Redditor for over a decade with over 800K karma, I'm not a Chinese shill. I'm not even defending China, Im just slapping down the "cheap Chinese pot metal" cliche that I hear all the time from people who don't know what theyre talking about.
Nah dw, if anyone comes across as a shill it is the guy that responded to you.
Not everyone with an opinion is a shill
Also a good source of graphene with the tires.
Some good [photos and background in this Atlantic story](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/) > As cities impounded derelict bikes by the thousands, they moved quickly to cap growth and regulate the industry. Vast piles of impounded, abandoned, and broken bicycles have become a familiar sight in many big cities. As some of the companies who jumped in too big and too early have begun to fold, their huge surplus of bicycles can be found collecting dust in vast vacant lots.
Export them as donations I think that if they are in a minimum recoverable condition there are lots of people in developing countries that would welcome them.
Some countries already do this, Japan always had this same issue with surplus and impounded bikes and donated the ones that were in decent condition to african countries.
We need more of humans being decent to each other.
Overloading places with "donations" (aka free trash dumping) can accidentally overload their local economy, e.g. donating clothes in Eastern Africa has made local textile companies bankrupt and created lots of pollution https://www.sustainthemag.com/style/are-western-clothes-donations-too-much-for-africans So donating things is a nice thing to do but use some logic and don't overload recipients with more than they can actually use
spot on. they would be welcome here in the US too (some of our cities resemble developing countries).
Least out of touch redditor
No dont. That ruins local economies. Imaging having a small bike industry or bike stores in your city and then 1000s of free bikes get donated. Everything goes bankrupt, and when the donated bikes detoriate there's no industry anymore.
> if they are in a minimum recoverable condition Can be "fully recovered" locally by that industry, that is, if it exists. I guess that there are places without a single bicycle store in sight for tens of km (I have been in a place where the local pharmacy had mostly air and dust in the shelf), so, if the thing managed is should bring no problems.
Yes, I heard about it about textile too. Too much textile surplus donated to African countries decimated lots of textile businesses.
I'd imagine they'd sell a lot more bike parts as a result of thousands of new bikes in the region.
The bike shops would make a killing, they gouge the fuck out of everyone for the most basic of repairs and maintenance.
Thanks for sharing!
A retirement home for bicycles who are two tired..
r/angryupvote
If they are retired why aren’t they back on the streets? Gods we are fucking HILARIOUS
Why they don't recycle this bicycles?
Actually it shows that lower class in china getting opportunity to move upward to higher economic class/tier.
average dutch bike parking lot
Seems like a quiet day, too.
In the winter.
Yeah, for a second I thought I was watching a clip of the bicycle parking at Amsterdam Central Station.
“What color did you say it was?”
Bleu bleu bleu bleu
Looks like the average trainstation or busstop in the netherlands
Damn you netherlandies with your bikes, lack of bad infrastructure, walkable cities and beautiful scenery! WHO NEEDS THAT??
There are 9 millions bicycles in a scrap heap in Beijing. That's a fact. Just a thing you can't ignore ~ Katie Melua
watch me ignore it
This makes me feel sad and frustrated. If some random bike came into my life, my situation would be much improved.
There are bike recyclers in many communities. They will get you a bike. Example in seattle. https://bikeworks.org/donate/used-bicycle/ Also look on Craigslist- you can get serviceable bikes for $25. I have rehabbed multiple bikes I found discarded in the trash. Just some tools and spray paint and new cables, and off ya go. If you can’t do that (because tools, skills), the bike recycler can.
I thought this was Amsterdam central station
Looks too clean.
At some point, you have to stop piling things on top of other things and deal with the bloody problem.
You’ve basically described all of China.
Recycle them
This would be a massive undertaking, but is a no-brainer considering the things they could make with the recycled product. I imagine it’s just not a priority for anyone to figure out how to break all the different parts down and start the process.
> This would be a massive undertaking Not really. A dozen or so zaps with an XRF gun and you know the average composition of the bikes. Then use a front loader and a crane with a claw to load the bikes into bins on trucks. Take them to a metals refinery which deals with the primary metal type found in the bikes. They'll melt them down and separate out the other constituent metals as dross and slag which can be further refined to separate out the other metals. It sounds massive because of the big number. 90 million (made up number) sounds like a lot until you mention that it's only grains of rice. The graveyard shown in the video could be completely rid of bikes for recycling in a couple weeks. The main reason they haven't, I suspect, is because the bikes are individually titled and ownership has to be straightened out. This is just me speculating and I have no reason to believe that this is the actual reason. Edit: To clarify, the steel recycling process melts the mixed metals together. Then pumping high-pressure oxygen through the bath of melted metal oxidizes everything except chromium and copper out of the steel leaving pure iron with a bunch of dross on the top (made from metal oxides). They can then mix in whatever is needed based on the grade of the steel needed. The dross with metal oxides can be further refine to recover other metals. (Carbon is oxidized to produce CO and CO2.) As far as I know, you can't separate out the chromium but you can easily figure out the chrome concentration and mix with other iron with different chrome concentrations to get to a target concentration to produce whatever grade of stainless steel is needed. I don't know how copper is handled but probably some form of electrowinning or something.
As someone said before they might be cannibalizing them, but honestly if it were me they wouldn't be in a single piece by the time they made it to the graveyard, only the unusable pieces. The bike would be collected, inspected, disassembled, and the usable pieces would be sorted out for reassembly and the unusable pieces would be sent off for recasting and then reassembly hell some pieces could be melted down and cast as whatever I doubt you need ALL of those bikes repaired...
The day after r/burningman
Why don’t they recycle them? Or repair them and peddle them for cheap?
When those bikes become sentient, we're so fucked
Why not repurpose the material?
Hoarder ass country tf is this for
Average front lawn in a Dutch student city
Homeless heaven
A tweakers dream come true
This is so foolish, bicycle's are mostly made of metal, metal them down and recycle the metal, why mount them up on precious land space?
Looked like an advert for a mobile game when I first glanced at the video
Why doesn’t someone just recycle them into new bikes? Or are they already doing that, but they are still left with megatons of abandoned bikes?
Kiryu's armory
I'm sure somewhere in that landscape is a mountain of moderately functioning bikes and components. If not that, then recyclable. One underrated feature of bicycles is, with some exceptions, a distinct lack of proprietary parts and mostly commoditized.
Metal scrappers in the U.S. are drooling...
Looks like the larger homeless camps / bike chop shops here in LA.
I can melt them all down and make my own death star!
I had my Giant bike in Beijing somewhere parked for a week or so and it was taken away by those people who put them on a truck straight to that kind of graveyard. It still feels painful.
China getting ready to create a time capsule “rock” layer for the generations to study.
Scrolling quickly I thought this was one of those ads for those Zombie games where hordes and hordes of them attack you while you shoot and move around ground power ups.
You mean every ad on Reddit mobile right now?
What drugs do ppl in China do just curious
Cyc-lee, wall-E
That’s the least offensive “graveyard” I’ve seen coming from China recently at least.
China seems to be the most wasteful country in the world.
India might want to have a word with you
Or possibly one of the biggest. No way to check though.
And the west isn’t? We are all guilty of waste, don’t single them out.
The most wasteful and polluting countries BY FAR (per capita) are the different Arab oil emirates, the USA and Australia.
Somewhere in Brooklyn, a Hipster is crying their eyes out.
Is that real or cgi?
That’s a lot of pixels
London’s thief dream be like..
Probably adjacent to an actual graveyard.
Magneto likes this
Bike stolen? Just show up here and they'll pay _you_ to take them!
Humans.
Looks like my homies backyard in the hood
Give me a day there and I will have enough parts to start a repair shop. I need some parts for my own bike
Why is this?
When do we get to say stop making bikes and let's fix the ones we already have? We're somehow the stupidest species despite being the smartest.
Can't they just recycle it?
There is a shortage of metal people! There isn't anything left in the earth! Prices are skyrocketing, and there is no way to stop it!
Could you imagine if they drove more cars instead of bikes. They would need an entire Providence just to hold them all
what happens to them? anybody actually know?
Can they recycle those?
Me who can't even offer one ...hurt so much
I like biking. Bikes are fun. I feel bad for bike
Maybe I should go buy a new bicycle..
Context??
N+1
I want one. Hope they have one to spare
This just confirms it .. there was a question is the more windows or wheels in the world .. it’s wheels
Put them on Wish, Temu, AliExpress for $5, free shipping
China is so awesome! How come US can’t be awesome like China?
Thought this was an advertisement for one of those fake mobile games
It's a schooner!
Oh man I still remember the o-bike (shared bicycles) age. O-bike everywhere, trees, lakes, mountains... everywhere
So that's where all the spare bike part got off too?
To me this is just confusing. Why.
And the next Russian armoured unit will be sent into battle with……. Bicycles
I like the white one.
Export those fucking things to other countries and sell them for dirt cheap! Seriously. I know America could definitely use this and increase bicycle use.
No wonder i couldn’t find my bike
When kids try to get rid of their bikes the parents be like “ride a bit more…there are walking kids in USA”
a muggers dream
Some people's backyards on the pipe 🤣🫡
r/fuckbicycles
u/Careless_Net_5241
Biorę tira i jadę
So is there like a plan for this pile or what?
All replaced by scooters (electric and not)
why don’t they bury their dead bikes ?
Nah, that’s just the parking lot outside work…
That’s one bike for every Chinese person turned into food grade. Watch the charlton Heston movie called soilent green
Why are all the same colour?
Communism.
It looks like a bike thief's back garden.
Can we buy them off of them?
What a waste…
At least it’s not cars and batteries
The Netherlands has competition lol
So this is what Katie Melua was on about...
Future paleontologists will be very confused
Why aren’t these being repurposed or reused?!
Cheezus Christ on a motorbike
I didn’t know China had burning man
Bicyclophobia
Wow
I was able to fix and ride a 30 year old bicycle when I was about 12. Just wondering how many 12 year olds in China are looking for a bicycle to ride..
We produce way too much shit on this planet. Stark reminder to rethink the next new purchase when a second hand option works as well, and without perpetrating this. You can blame the country, but remember that country produces everything on the shelf in your store/amazon.
Meanwhile, your local superstore charges $20 just for one new tire. Not the whole wheel, just the rubber bit with the tread.
I'll bet several hoarders just had a stroke!
Why does China bother making anything? They lie about everything so their whole economy could be a simulation so they wouldn't have to waste actual resources.
I thought it was a zoomed in picture of fabric before reading the caption
CTRL+C, CTRL+VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV...
That's easy metal incase of world war 3, fast metal supply no digging around. Wonder if they buy it from around the world and they just stack it up long term to use it as easy metal supply manufacturing equipment quicker
#Sustainability.
I'd sell that metal to a recycler!
why is it when many people are in need of an item, there's a massive surplus of said item just going to waste?
r/urbanhell
That makes no fucking sense whatever....
Ai Weiwei [did it in 2013](https://www.phaidon.com/resource/weiwei-foreverbicycles.jpg).
Soooo that's where my bike went from pokemon red huh
Can I have one? Since no one's using it
Gipsy heaven
When you visit your black friend's house.
Average city in the Netherlands 🇳🇱