Through a collaboration between Glasgow City Council, St Paul’s Youth Forum, HMP Barlinnie and Cycling Scotland, old bikes are being given a new lease of life to support more people in Glasgow to travel by bike.
More than 500 bikes are expected to be collected at recycling centres Polmadie, Shieldhall and Dawsholm, where staff have been trained to identify bikes and parts that can be diverted from landfill. The aim is to prevent a potential 6,250 tonnes of metal from going to scrap[1], instead redistributing these bikes into communities and helping to tackle inequalities.
After being collected at the recycling depots, the bikes are then dropped off at HMP Barlinnie, where they are being repaired as part of the prison’s skills development programme, delivered by Barlinnie Bike Works in collaboration with St Paul’s Youth Forum. At any one time, 16 inmates can work in the prison workshop, repairing bikes whilst learning new skills and gaining qualifications, and providing opportunities for a future in the community after custody.
The final step of the journey for the refurbished bikes will be redistribution into the local community, making bikes available for children and people who would otherwise face financial barriers to cycling.
Funding
The pilot is funded by the Scottish Government’s People and Place Programme and delivered through Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), working with Glasgow City Council, St Paul’s Youth Forum and Cycling Scotland.
Ricky Baxter, Cycle Hub Coordinator at St Paul's Youth Forum, described the impact of giving away bikes to those in need: “People look at an old bike and maybe can’t see any value in it, but by the time it goes through our whole system, and it’s given out and the difference it makes to the end user, it’s great. When you’re dealing with families who don’t have a lot of money, or people who’ve got no bike, or a school with no bikes, and being able to give them that bike for free and just see the happiness: it’s tremendous.”
You can buy a second-hand bike for £100, but in a lot of communities, £100 is a lot of money that’s maybe needed for feeding the family that week. By trying to keep it free, it’s encouraging active travel and so it’s a win-win for us.
Ricky added: “Staff at the waste centres have been absolutely fantastic. We did some training with the staff so we could triage the quality of the bikes and they are pretty good at sorting them out. There’s not a lot of times we say ‘we’re not taking that’, because they’ve already done the work for us.”
Over 200 bikes have already been diverted from the scrapheap at the council’s waste centres since October 2025 and St Paul’s Youth Forum has 150 young people on a waiting list for a refreshed bike.
The council’s waste management team is aiming to provide the charity with 500 bikes for reuse by the time a pilot programme ends in March 2026.
The impact of the pilot will be used to support other local authorities to start similar pathways for bike reuse, saving them from landfill, supporting employment opportunities, and breaking down barriers to more people travelling by bike.
People living in Glasgow can get involved:
If you have an old, unwanted or damaged bike, it can be dropped off at Polmadie, Shieldhall and Dawsholm recycling centres – find your local centre
For residents unable to travel to their local recycling centre, please contact St Paul's Youth Forum's On Bikes team via email at ricky@spyf.org.uk to discuss donating a bike.
You can also visit Aye Cycle Glasgow for a list of organisations accepting dated bikes.
[1] Based on Estimated Reuse Network: 12.5kg can be used as a mixed weight average, based on adult bike average weight: 15kg, kid’s bike average weight: 10 kg
