Local Business Collects Bicycles for Charity
Bicycle Donation by Junk Doctors
Chances are you have fond childhood memories of riding a bicycle. When you first received a bicycle as a child, did you ever stop to think how much it cost? Probably not. It’s likely that you leapt onto that bicycle seat with a wide smile on your face and began the process of learning how to ride it. Sure, you fell off a time or two, but even so, you kept riding along.
This may have been your reality, but it’s not the reality for many families in our region. It’s a sad truth that many families live in poverty and have to scrape by every day, living from paycheck to paycheck. These families don’t have extra cash to throw around. When they do have a few hundred extra dollars, where do you think it will go? Towards buying bicycles for their children or towards the next grocery trip? According to the US Census, the poverty rate in Charlotte, NC is 11.9%. That’s a lot of kids going without bikes. Compare to Raleigh, at 11.8%, and Greensboro, at a whopping 18.4%. We got to thinking about what difference we can make for these impoverished families and their children.
Donate Old Bikes with Us
Junk Doctors has an idea of how we can make life a little more fun for the children of our community’s impoverished families. We collect all sorts of bicycles while taking on junk removal projects all throughout our service areas. The community has been very good to us, giving our business the opportunities it needed to grow into an enormous operation that we’re very proud of. Now it’s our chance to give back to the community, and one of the ways we want to do this is by donating the bicycles we collect from the people we serve. Instead of taking them to the dump, we want to put them into the hands of children that otherwise wouldn’t get a chance to have a bike of their own.
“Junk Doctors collects quite a few bikes that families have outgrown and no longer use. Instead of recycling them or tossing them in the landfill, we want to see these bikes get reused. This is a fantastic way for us to give back to the community that we serve each day and allows us to keep items out of the landfill.”
—Christian Fowler, Co-Owner of Junk Doctors
You can probably imagine the emotions that rush through a child’s head upon receiving a new bicycle. How did you feel when you got yours? You probably felt excited, thankful, and curious. Thanks to our bicycle donation, another child can feel the same way you did way back in the day. It’s also a great way to encourage our newest generation to get outdoors and exercise!
In addition to being charitable, it just makes sense to give these perfectly good bicycles away. One of our commitments at Junk Doctors is to be eco-friendly. Therefore, it wouldn’t make sense for us to dump these bikes at the landfill anyway. Bicycle recycling is an option, but why not “recycle” bikes into a new household? In other words, we can reduce the amount of waste we produce AND help someone in need at the same time. That’s what we call a “win-win scenario”!
Other Donations
While we have taken a new focus on bicycles, those aren’t the only items we donate. From lightly used furniture to still-functional appliances, we are happy to donate household goods of all shapes and sizes. Charitable organizations such as the Habitat for Humanity ReStore sell these items at heavily discounted prices to fund the construction of homes for those who need them.
We are excited to see the results of our bicycle donation initiative. Let’s give back to the community together!
