Even though Vienna’s waste management agency, the MA 48, according to their own information, is collecting around 2500 abandoned bicycles within the city borders per year, it has turned out to be unbelievably difficult to get hold of any. Once an object has been officially qualified as “trash” (meaning: ended up in a dumpster – which is quite self-evidently always owned by someone – or simply being touched by official “waste management” personnel it seems) it is near to impossible to declassify it as such, and save it from being burnt, shredded, or melted back into undefined formless matter.

“In fact, it has been shown that over 70 percent of the total waste generated in Germany is held as fractions in technological processes (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2015b). However, the ambitious, technological goals of the circular economy have led to a strong separation between the individual and the institutional level.
The established waste system with its regulations can therefore also be perceived as a closed “waste regime” (Gille, 2007, 9; Reno, 2009, 21).“*

Ritzmann, S. and Birkhäuser Verlag (2018) Wegwerfen, Entwerfen : Müll im Designprozess – Nachhaltigkeit in der Designdidaktik, p. 32. Basel.

But we might have finally found a loop-hole and also possible other sources; so Lukas and I won’t have to go “Bonnie & Clyde” to get us a sample set. And this is our first legally aquired specimen:

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