Hacker News Reader

I immediately thought of some sort of share a bike program or better yet disposable bikes. For $20 visitors to a city could buy a bike ride it for a week or so then recycle the cardboard, assuming the cardboard is recyclable after whatever treatments it goes through.

Although I doubt the $20 estimate without a way to automate production. The video made it seem like a fairly labor intensive practice.

View on HN

But... why not just lend regular, cheap bikes and reuse them? Reuse is a lot less expensive than recycling.

I visited a city last week (Matsumoto) that has this service, they lend cheap city bikes for free by the day. Not even an ID card needed, you just write your name and phone number and go. It's a fantastic service when visiting.

Seems like a great way to loose a lot of bikes.

It's been working fine for years, though. I think part of it is being in Japan, and part of it is that the bikes just don't have much resale value. No point stealing creaky, cheap city bikes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com