| | | | PEDAL PEOPLE NEWS WINTER 2025/2026 Greetings from the Pedal People Press! Another year rolls by. What have the Pedal People been up to? Put your slippers on and make a cup of tea... It’s our Winter newsletter. | | | | TIER SURPLUS SYSTEM REVIEW
In Spring 2023 we started operating with an optional tiered pricing system, akin to sliding scale billing for our regular trash, recycling and compost customers. Much to our delight, many of you opted to pay a little more for your services, based on your household income. This has been a real game-changer for Pedal People, and has enabled us to do so much as a coop. Here’s how things are different almost 2 years later:
KEY TAKEAWAYS - We’ve been able to hold off on increasing prices for over a year. Despite disposal fees increasing significantly at both transfer stations that we use, and national inflation levels escalating, there hasn’t been a need to charge you more for regular trash, recycling and compost pickups
We’ve been providing a more equitable service. The tiered surplus system has given us the opportunity to offer temporary financial assistance to any customers in need, and to provide our services at subsidized pricing for lower earners. It’s enabled us to do more community outreach and volunteering. We’ve been paying ourselves a stipend to get involved at a multitude of other organisations and community events. We’ve supported the folks without housing, cleaned-up our rivers and bike paths, participated in parades, delivered food to the survival center and been part of various other programs in our community. We’ve donated some of our profits. We’ve opted to direct a large portion of our surplus to local organisations that we appreciate and want to support. We're glad to have been able to donate to the Center for New Americans, Tapestry health, the Northampton Parents Center and the Friends of Northampton Trails to name a few wonderful local orgs.
If you would like to learn more, or to opt into our tiered pricing system, check out this webpage. Likewise, if funds are tight right now, you can ask to be placed in a different tier. Reach out by phone or email if you have questions. | | | | | | We’ve been filmed doing our thing many times over the past 23 years, and now one of those videos (watch here!) has gone viral-ish, thanks to a wonderfully cinematic documentary by Palmer Lintz. Aka Cottage and Company.
Will, one of our worker owners, was filmed on a regular trash, recycling, and compost pickup route through the streets of Northampton and now said film has been viewed over 200,000 times!
It’s been really wonderful to have our efforts be spread to a wider audience. We’ve been contacted by folks all over the world asking how they might start their own worker owned coop or bike powered haulage company. Including messages from exotic places like Holland, Pakistan, Chile, Australia, and Connecticut.
Hundreds of people have commented on the video, mostly with words of support for our 28 worker-owner strong collective, and we’ve come to realise, people have a lot of questions about why we do things the way we do. While our newsletter subscribers likely know us better than our new fans in Australia, it does prompt us to answer some of those questions you may also have, like… Why don’t you use a kickstand? - When we lower our bikes on their side, it also lowers the towbar, which contacts the ground and acts like a parking brake. Essential tech in our undulating town. Why don’t you use e-bikes? - Actually, we use quite a few! While many of us prefer the classic non-electric versions, some of us use e-assist bikes, and we’re working on buying more as a collective to give us the option when our knees inevitably have off days, or when we just have a lot of pickups to make! How are you able to pay yourself a living wage? - We don’t have a CEO who gets paid x2000 the rate of our lowest paid worker. In fact, we all pretty much get paid the same. If it’s your 1st day or your 1,001st day. Our customers are able to pay a little more if they have the means and want to support us paying ourselves a fair wage. We also offer financial assistance if you need it. It’s a balancing act that is kept in check by our finance committee. What do you do in the Winter? - We keep going! It’s harder and colder, but it’s generally nice to be outside doing something physical through the colder months. Sometimes the weather is too disgusting and we might delay your pickup to the following day, but we let you know ;) Speaking of videos - here’s one of us doing our thing on a Winter’s day. Where can I get a trailer like that? - Bikes at Work. They’re epic. Where can I get a bike bucket like that? - The Bike Bucket. Literally the best pannier. Buy one or make your own with instructions on the website.
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CO2 Reduction - See how Pedal People helped make the air you breathe a little bit cleaner in ‘24!
This past year Pedal People was assisted by Artem Gavryliuk, a VAWC (Valley Alliance of Worker Coops) intern from the UMass cooperative certificate program, to create an economic/environmental impact report. This report examines the economic and environmental impacts of Pedal People Cooperative in 2024.
This data is provided by IMPLAN, an economic analysis software used in collaboration with the Department of Economics at UMass Amherst.
Some highlights: - 56 legs - We have 28 amazing workers!
- Working a livable wage - Our pay is above the industry average for hauling and delivery work
- Pumping up our local economy - Pedal People contributed $5,803,000 to local GDP - that’s almost 15x more than we contributed in 2011 when we last had this study done
- Bikes pedaled - 8,215 miles were cycled in ‘24, collecting 44,486 pickups. This doesn’t even include all our time collecting the downtown trash/recycling for Northampton and Florence.
- Cleaner air, cleaner community - by using bikes instead of trash trucks we kept 175,000 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere!
- Lots of banana peels - we kept 355,000 pounds of food waste out of landfills in ‘24. In all, Pedal People hauled 3,420,300 pounds of waste by bicycle that year
You deserve the real shout out though! You did the diligent sorting of your waste, the flattening of cardboard boxes, and trusting a funky group of people on bikes to pick up your stuff in ‘24.
You can read more about Pedal People’s ‘24 economic and environmental impact here: Pedal People: Environmental and Economic Impact Statement
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BILLING BY TEXT Do you ever wish you could get notified by a quick text when Pedal People sends you a new bill? Does it otherwise get lost in your email? Now you can get notifications of a new bill by text message.
You can choose to receive bills by email only, text only, email & text, or postal mail. Sign in to your account to change your settings, or just call, email or text us and we'll activate it for you.
| | | | PEDAL BABY ALERT Will (of viral-ish video fame) and his partner had their first baby in September. Thanks to many of our customers and friends who offered-up helpful baby items to be given new life with their baby Olive. We’re always happy to post on our socials if you’re ever looking for such items. Reuse is #1!
We also learnt of lots of local resources to tap into if you’re ever looking to offload old baby stuff or acquire used baby goods in Western Mass: | | | | Oli sporting a lovely sweater knitted by Robbin; a very talented PP customer :) | | | |
PEDAL PEOPLE'S HEAVY ROTATION See what Pedal People have been reading and listening to lately! | | Bikes, the Universe, and Everything: Feminist, Fantastical Tales of Bikes and Books, an anthology edited by Elly Blue - This was a joyful read, and I'm just going to quote from the book jacket what its about in order to do it justice: "One less starship! Ever gotten lost in a book? Or on your bicycle? Or both at once, by falling through a portal on the page? | | | |
Anything is possible in this collection of fifteen very short stories and one comic. Ranging from science fiction to fantasy and traveling in time from a reimagined past to the heat death of the universe, these stories combine the personal and popular power of spokes and words. Meet a young graduate who rides off to become a velo-archivist, a bookstore owner who must learn to bike after cars are banned, a daredevil messenger who makes a harrowing textbook delivery run, a talented scribe who creates a braille bicycle guide, and many more adventurous souls in disparate realities, united by their love for spinning wheels and the written word." - Adele
IT: Welcome to Derry - It’s one of the best TV shows I’ve seen in a while. I don’t scare easily and this show was creepy on many levels. Great story-line, great characters. The origin story of Stephen King’s IT has a great podcast that goes along with it (Kingcast). A must watch for any horror fan or anybody interested in a good show - Juan
Breaking the Plastic Wave 2025 - An Assessment of the Global System and Strategies for Transformative Change - This report from The Pew Charitable Trusts and Systemiq outlines some eye-popping stats on plastic waste. Growth in plastic production will outpace waste management capacity. Absent urgent international efforts, annual primary plastic production will rise 52% from 450 Mt in 2025 to 680 Mt in 2040, growing twice as fast as waste management, which, even with considerable investment, will expand by only 26%. By 2040, annual costs to collect and dispose of plastic would increase by 30% to US$140 billion, requiring additional public funds and posing a financial risk to businesses. Despite this increased spending, the share of plastic waste that is uncollected will nearly double by 2040 from 19% to 34%. It seems like Pedal People is operating in a growth industry, but it’s certainly not news that we’re happy to hear - Ben W
Lux - Rosalía - Genre-bending multi-lingual masterpiece. My favourite album of the Year and what I'd love to be able to sing in the shower - Ben J | | | | BIKE LAB WINTER 2026
Join us at the Bike Lab! Anyone wanting to learn more and/or share what they know about basic bike maintenance and repairs is welcome to stop by these free informal workshops, which continue over winter on Saturdays at least monthly (in late spring we will resume every other Saturday more consistently). | | | |
The next Bike Lab will be Saturday Jan 24th, 2026 and then February 7th, from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm at 12 Northern Ave in Northampton. Between February 20th to March 20th, Ruthy will be holding Bike Lab in Trinidad! Other folks will keep it running here in Northampton (dates TBD, check out our website for current info).
Got questions about Bike Lab, or can’t make it on Saturdays? Contact Ruthy by email or call/text 413-341-2522 to set up a time to learn about riding safety or bike maintenance at 8 High Street in Florence! | | | | CATCH PEDAL PEOPLE ON INSTAGRAM If you’re on social media, make sure you’re following us to meet your friendly neighborhood haulers and to stay up to date on goings-on in the collective! Find us @pedal_people_coop.
Bike on, Pedal People | | | | | | Our mailing address is PO Box 415 Northampton, MA 01061-0415
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