When thousands of rental bikes started inundating Dallas a year ago, Corey Troiani was already thinking about what would happen to them once the fad faded.

Over the weekend, hundreds of yellow Ofo bikes were spotted at a Dallas recycling center, surrendered as scrap metal after the bike-share company decided to leave the city.

Troiani works at the Texas Campaign for the Environment, and he said it’s important to him that businesses make conscientious decisions about recycling their products once they’ve been worn out.

“The producers of these bikes ought to be responsible for what’s done to their inevitable end of life,” he said. “That should be in the planning for the business model of these bikes.”

So he asked: How many of the 5,000 Ofo bikes that were pulled from Dallas streets were sent to scrap recyclers, and how many were donated for continued use?

We're answering Troiani's question that was submitted to Curious Texas, a project from The Dallas Morning News that invites you to join in our reporting process. The idea is simple: You have questions, and our journalists are trained to track down answers.

Of the 5,000 bikes Ofo brought to Dallas, it’s offered up a couple hundred to local community organizations.

About 250 were offered to CitySquare, and 350 were offered to Bikes for Tykes. As of Tuesday morning, none of the bikes offered had been delivered.

So that leaves 4,400 bikes. Did all of those wind up at the CMC Recycling facility south of downtown?

An Ofo spokesman said no. Some of the bikes are being moved to different markets across the country, but he didn’t say how many. College Station, for instance, will get some of the bikes that were once in Dallas.

Staff writer Robert Wilonsky contributed to this report.

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