Izhar Gafni goes for a spin on his cardboard bike. Nobody believed it would work, but an Israeli cycling enthusiast thought otherwise.  By Moshe Cohen

Izhar Gafni is crazy about bikes – he makes them, fixes them and rides them. But three engineer friends thought the chain had really slipped from the gears when Gafni suggested crafting a cheap and environmentally friendly bicycle out of cardboard. He had been inspired while working in California on a pomegranate project, and one day saw a car outside a bicycle shop sporting a wood-frame boat with a cardboard cover.

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Gafni started testing and building, refusing to accept the engineers’ opinion that the project would never work. Israelis, he reminded them, “did impossible things with agriculture, with military, with high-tech and science. I thought, if they can do it, I can do it.” Gafni has built six prototypes of 100 percent recyclable materials, 95% percent of it strong cardboard. He sees it as a possible urban environmental project or perhaps as a mode of transportation for schoolchildren in Africa. He is hoping the worldwide publicity for his project will win his cardboard bikes corporate or governmental sponsors. Music by Kevin MacLeod