What is reTube?
reTube collects defective bicycle tubes, repairs them and sells them to trading partners.
Wherever bike inner tubes are usually thrown away, we save the basic material and bring it back to life. Wherever they are cut and recycled, we offer our system as a higher-quality "R-strategy" of the circular economy:
Re-think.
Re-use.
Re-pair.
Re-furbish.
Recycling is the R-strategy at the lowest level, has its justification in the circular economy, but should only be used as a last resort.
With the higher-quality R strategy, we save the extensive resources for new production and transport over long distances. On the other hand, there is a very low consumption of resources with patches, vulcanizing fluid and short transport routes for repairs.
The repairs are carried out in a workshop for the disabled and offer the clients on site a wide range of activities to an individual extent and with high educational value.
We collect the defective tubes from dealers, bicycle workshops and private individuals. For about three decades, it has been common practice to stop repairing tubes, but simply replace them with new tubes. In the USA alone, the mountain of discarded bicycle inner tubes amounts to 10 million pieces per year.
Participating companies have the opportunity to participate in our circular system and to be both suppliers of defective tubes and customers of patched tubes.
reTube provides a two-year leakage guarantee to the exclusion of external influence.
As a valve cap, we start with a limited special edition of used game figures and wooden dice. After that, caps made of oiled wood are used.