Community Cycles has been recycling bike tires at CHaRM/Ecocycle for most of 2022, thanks to City of Boulder Climate Initiative funding. (You can read our intro to the program here.) We have an update on the program as local bike enthusiast Shawn McQuerry has stepped up with additional funding for the program, keeping even more bike tires out of the landfill.
Last week Craig David, Development Director, chatted with Shawn about why he chose to support this sustainability program. Dax, Shop Director, also pipes in with additional details about the program.
The Interview:
Craig: Today we’re at Community Cycles with our friend Shawn, dedicating our tire cycle program to the McQuerry family. We’ve got Shawn with us, tell us about the history of the family, their passion with cycling, and why you chose to help support this program.
Shawn: About the logo, back in the 50s, my grandfather and great uncle established the McQuerry Trailer Company in Fort Worth. My father worked there, and afterwards he met my mom in Arlington TX. They came up to Colorado few years later. Throughout their entire life they’ve involved with bicycling, exercise and through that I decided to sponsor this program.
So you can see we have the James and Diana McQuerry Memorial Tire Barrel.
Craig: Love the story! They knew the secret of Colorado before everybody else.
Shawn, it’s a pleasure. We’re presenting the certificate for you and just again thank you for being our inaugural partner to the tire recycling program.
Craig: Dax, tell us, now that we’re collecting tires, what happens next. What happens? What does it look like?
Dax: Well after we go through and examine each tire pretty closely and determine the ones that we can reuse before we recycle, then we put them in this barrel. We’ll save them and then every Wednesday we drive down to Charm / Eco cycle and we recycle them
Craig: So that’s obviously part of the model of Community Cycles is kind of a closed loop system. We take in goods, either repurpose them or recycling them.
Dax: Yes
Craig: Tell us about recycling tires. Like why.
Dax: I mean from throwing away hundreds of tires each week is… it kind of like eats your soul. I know people drop things off here or at any thrift store really, because they feel bad about throwing things away that might still have some use or might still have some life left in them.
Craig: So when this program was coming about, we looked at finding partners. A big partner obviously is the McQuerry family, with our gratitude in understanding the need, and then also the city. Tell us how that came about.
Dax: There was a group of thrift stores that got together about how much product is coming into our stores and the best way to recycle them and so city actually funded us, I believe $1500 or maybe $2000 to help cover the initial costs and then with private donors, such as the McQuerry family helped us to achieve our goal.
I think last time I counted we’re above 2500 tires recycled this year already.
Craig: So first seven months the year we’ve recycled 2500 tires.
So there’s the tire recycling program. Again, part of our service and how we keep the lif cycle of cycling goods going. Just to be clear, for both members and non-members of Community Cycles, we take those without charge?
Dax: Exactly.
Become Involved with Recycling
Community Cycles reuses or recycles literal tons of materials every year. From the tires mentioned here, along with any bike, part and accessory you may be ready to part with, at no charge to you.
We encourage you to become involved with sustainability, whether it’s a monetary donation like Shawn’s that will keep this program going beyond 2022, or simply bringing us your old bikes and parts. We’ll reuse what we can to keep it going awhile longer, or recycle it if it’s at the end of its current life, where it will become a new product and be used awhile longer. Donations can be brought to our Shop at 2601 Spruce St, Unit B, Boulder.
Contact Craig David, Development Director, with questions about how you can donate to Community Cycles sustainability programs.