The bike made from plastic waste that doesn’t rust
With his “Igus Urban Bike”, the entrepreneur Frank Blase wants to bring a bicycle onto the market that consists entirely of plastic waste. He also notices a musical about his hometown of Cologne.
Cologne – Do you know Igus? Not even most people in Cologne. This could change soon. The company from the District of Cologne Porz wins one business award after the other and has now cracked the first billion in sales. Igus manufactures new and recycled high-performance plastics for flexible applications ranging from office furniture to space rockets.
The head of the family business with more than 5,000 residents in over 30 countries is a native of Cologne: Frank Blase. At the age of 63, the entrepreneur now wants to switch. 2023 should be from Cologne from the bicycle world are being revolutionized: with a wheel that does not rust, requires no maintenance and is made entirely of plastic.
Igus Urban Bike: Built from waste, all plastic, nothing rusts
“I want to produce something that is completely new,” says Frank Blase. In the Porz showroom, where everything made of plastic is presented, from the smallest ball bearing to the fully automated low-cost robot, it is there: the igus urban bike. Bright orange, deep black and robust in style. This is important, because in the future recycled shampoo bottles will also guarantee stability. “The new bike can stand outside in all weathers. Since all components are made of plastic, nothing rusts”, says Frank Blase, “even a bicycle gear made of plastic was unthinkable for a long time. We live from the fact that you can’t imagine something.”
Gyro Gearloose from Cologne works with his team to recycle valuable raw materials before they are incinerated in an environmentally harmful way. In the end there will be a bike made entirely of plastic and soon possibly made of recyclable plastic from the garbage dumps of this world – What sounds impossible, Cologne heads want to achieve.
Frank Blase central musical “Himmel & Kölle”
At heart, Frank Blase is a Cologne native through and through. Love your city is not a saying for him, but action: instead of with that 1. FC Cologne or in Cologne Carnival but he shows them with a musical: “Himmel & Kölle”. He managed the production with millions from his own pocket. “It was always my dream to have my own musical. I was immediately hooked when the authors Moritz Netenjakob and Dietmar Jacobs introduced me to the idea of writing a play about our hometown,” says Blase.
This has resulted in a snappy declaration of love full of wit, but also with “Jeföhl”, as they say in Cologne. The main character in the play – gullible and pious – despairs of the noisy and sinful city. An experience that should not be alien to many of us and that has perhaps already attracted thousands of visitors to the multiple hit musical at the Volksbühne. For Blase, it’s also down to the mentality of the audience: “The people of Cologne like to rub shoulders with the city,” and continues: “However, I also believe proudly that we’re almost aware of how things are going here and overlook that it is basically the same in most cities. But the man from Cologne likes to celebrate his mistakes. And the city has flaws, just like all of us do.” Perhaps imperfections are what make our Cologne so human. In any case, in the musical it gets jerky in the end.
Frank Blase: “Cologne is often chaotic and dirty”
And in reality? Some people wonder how long things will go well here if Cologne continues to be left behind? The Mayor of Cologne Henrietta Recker has not been a guest yet. Wouldn’t she like to watch the Cologne musical make fun of her city? Maybe overdoing it? “No, there’s actually nothing exaggerated, contradicts Frank Blase, “perhaps a bit exaggerated. But it’s all true.” Under lists: “The city is often chaotic and dirty, the Cologne clique, the bridge that IS held together by locks. It takes forever to build the subway, and the opera is overpriced by a million.”
- 24RHINE-Guest author Claudia Hessel is the chief presenter of RTL West – and a die-hard Cologne native. As Chairwoman of the Board, the TV journalist heads the Cologne Forum for Culture in Dialogue and is active in the Cologne Press Club on a voluntary basis. This article comes from the newsletter of the “Cologne Press Club”, which you can subscribe to here.
Frank Blase started small as an entrepreneur. He knows very well from his own experience that things you want to change take staying power and that setbacks shouldn’t get you down. He continues to believe in the strengths of the city and in the many people who help shape it: “Cologne has so much potential, in business, culture and also in administration! We in Europe could become a model city if we were open to new ideas together and didn’t always say: That’s not possible.” A multimedia model is to publicly show where the journey for Cologne could go in 30 years in ecological, economic and urban planning terms. He wants to finance the project himself. Only the city leaders show no interest in his commitment – at least not yet.
And so in the end there is a bitter aftertaste and Cologne is once again below its potential. The potential of bright minds is neglected – not an isolated case and also not a good prognosis for the Cologne of the future. Hopefully things will work out here as well. (ch/IDZRNRW)
The original declaration of love from “Himmel & Kölle”.
“I know the Ebertplatz is ugly Barbarossaplatz too loud,
and Kölle is often corrupt, mediocre and obstructed,
it’s also narcissistic and embarrassing, headless and bellyless,
but my cologne is the backdrop I need to breathe.
I want to live in Cologne and I know why,
my cologne is often chaotic, dirty, lopsided and crooked,
But the town has a secret and she gets me with it
Jeck shines in the deepest dirt, the city has mistakes like me,
has a lot of mistakes just like me!”