In recent years, activists & policymakers have increasingly turned to mobilizing older technologies in their pursuit of sustainability, and waste recycling and bicycles both exemplify this development. This series of fascinating case studies traces the twin histories of biking and recycling, providing valuable context for today's policy challenges.

PART I: INTRODUCTION Introduction: How Old Technologies Became Sustainable: An Introduction Ruth Oldenziel and Helmuth Trischler PART II: CYCLING HISTORIES Chapter 1. Use and Cycling in West Africa Hans Peter Hahn Chapter 2. The Politics of Bicycle Innovation: Comparing the American and Dutch Human-Powered Vehicle Movements, 1970s-present Manuel Stoffers Chapter 3. Scarcity, Poverty, Exclusion: Negative Associations of Bicycle's Uses and Cultural History in France Catherine Bertho Lavenir Chapter 4. Who Pays, Who Benefits? Bicycle Taxes as Policy Tool of the Public Good, 1890-2012 Adri de la Bruheze and Ruth Oldenziel Chapter 5. Monuments of Unsustainability: Planning, Path Dependence, and Cycling in Stockholm Martin Emanuel PART III: INTERSECTIONS Chapter 6. Bicycling and Recycling in Japan: Divergent Trajectories William Steele PART IV: RECYCLING HISTORIES Chapter 7. Premodern Sustainability? The Secondhand and Repair Trade in Urban Europe Georg Stoeger Chapter 8. Waste to Assets: How Household Waste Recycling Evolved in West Germany Roman Koester Chapter 9. Ecological Modernization of Waste-Dependent Development? Hungary's 2010 Red Mud Disaster Zsuzsa Gille Chapter 10. "Der Kampf um den Abfallstrom". Conflict and Contestation in Re-Valuing E-Waste in Germany Djahane Salehabidi PART IV: REFLECTIONS Chapter 11. Can History Offer Pathways to Sustainability? Donald Worster Chapter 12. History, Sustainability, Choice Robert Friedel Contributors Select Bibliography Index

"The reviewer freely admits to have learned many interesting and fascinating facts about `Cycling and Recycling' in very different country contexts. In addition, most of the contributions have been written in such a way as to be so comprehensible and jargon-free as to make them accessible also to readers beyond the narrow circle of specialists, which appears particularly important for an interdisciplinary field such as environmental history. In addition, the collection reveals, beyond the semantic bracket of the title, a thematic stringency that one can only wish for in the cases of many available syntheses bound together." H-Soz-Kult

Ruth Oldenziel is Professor of American and European History at the Eindhoven University of Technology and visiting scholar at the LMU Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. Her books include Consumers, Users, Rebels: The People Who Shaped Europe with Mikael Hard; Cold War Kitchen with Karin Zachmann; Gender and Technology with Nina Lerman and Arwen Mohun; and Making Technology Masculine.Helmuth Trischler is Head of Research of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Professor of Modern History and the History of Technology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and Co-Director (with Christof Mauch) of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. His most recent book is Building Europe on Expertise: Innovators, Organizers, Networkers with Martin Kohlrausch.