Cardboard Bike A Cheap Solution to Theft
Posted by Jess Brouse on July 4th, 2008
In a world of over-packaging, why not take the packaging and make something useful of it? An industrial design student at Sheffield Hallam University in the U.K. has built a cheap, ecological transport. Ta-dah! A cardboard bike. Phil Bridge doesn’t have a name for it yet, but if we can humbly suggest: the ReCycle.
Bridge said he designed the bike after learning that a bicycle is stolen every 71 seconds in England, so he decided to make a bike cheap enough that it wouldn’t matter if it got lifted (Hey, bikes thieves should go green too!) and designed the bike as eco-friendly as possible.
The prototype is made almost entirely from recyclable and recycled materials, using interchangeable mechanical parts. It costs about $30 to make. The body of the bike is environmentally-friendly and biodegradable industrial cardboard used in constructing partitional boarding. We’ve seen cardboard used in everything form Ferraris to laptops, but nothing that kept its construction so…apparent.
“It does get wet in the rain,” said Bridge. “That is a problem.”
But Bridge thinks the lightweight quality of the cardboard could actually be a benefit. A bargain bike is less susceptible to thives. Low-cost bikes at the moment are very heavy which can put potential riders off. Plus, it’d be easier to get it into a tree.
The bike can support anyone up to 168 pounds and the wheels and chains are standard for use on bikes.
Originally from EcoGeek.org by
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