If you’ve ever wanted to tone your calves and vasti mediali (that round muscle just above the knee) while grinding corn, charging your phone or making a smoothie, then a small gang of clean energy inventor-entrepreneurs operating out of a two-story house in the northwest of Guadalajara is the answer to your overly-specific prayers.
In 2011, a tapatio named Saul Polino traveled with a couple of associates to San Andres Itzapa, Guatemala, for the purpose of following up on the rumor of a company called Bici-Tec manufacturing machines powered by human-derived kinetic energy – bicycle-esque contraptions able to provide energy for any number of domestic or agricultural tasks, from washing clothes to liquefying avocados. Upon locating its owner and operator, Carlos Marroquín, Polino and co. convinced him to return with them to Guadalajara and act as advisor and sensei for their new business, Bicimaquinas.
Six years later and the company is shipping its devices all over Mexico and even as far as Spain, where, rather than being harnessed for their ostensible purpose of energy generation, they’ve become part of exhibits of oddball inventions in several museums.
Saul Polino has the shaggy good looks of a young, idealistic Christ, one working in electronics and steel, rather than carpentry. His first formative influence was his father, a bike enthusiast who worked in electronics.Polino himself grew up fixing and putting together his own bikes. However, in response to frequent assumptions that he must be a bike fanatic, he asserts that no, he is not. The bicycles themselves seem almost incidental to his company’s over-arching ethos, which is a synthesis of disparate influences.
A book he cites as influential is “How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits,” by John Jeavons, which promotes the idea of “bio-intensive farming.” The guiding notion Polino distilled from the book is energy efficiency — extracting the greatest yield while leaving behind as little carbon foot-print as possible. And while Bicimaquinas follows that idea as closely as possible, some waste is unavoidable, which he illustrated using one of Bicimaquina’s products, a bike that charges phones and powers speakers, as a visual aid.
“There are places on this bike where energy is lost. It’s lost here,” Polino said, indicating the chain, “and here,” he added, indicating with a forefinger a battery the size of a large cigar box.
A central problem, he says, is that the field of electronics is only a little over 100 years old.
“I studied electronics myself,” he exclaimed, “and I barely understand it!”
It’s a problem he runs into often when working with clients. Half of his job is managing unrealistic expectations, like when a customer thought he could power his entire house with just two Bicimaquina bicycles.
The bicycle and environmental activism cultures of California are additional source of inspiration for Polino and his enterprise. For instance, Rock the Bike is an Oakland-based company whose mission, according to its website, is to “get people in touch with their ability to make a real, lasting impact in the ongoing climate crisis.”
And then there’s Bikes Not Bombs, which “reclaims” and repurposes bike parts; they regularly send Marroquín at Bici-Tec materials for his various products.
The bulk of Bicimaquina’s daily operations are run out of a warehouse in Zapopan and the home/workshop he shares with his sister and two brothers. The company ships bicycles equipped with various devices useful to restaurant and home kitchens around Mexico. These include grinders, millers, corn cob strippers and blenders. In addition, there are machines that operate clothes washers, cement mixers and wood-chippers. It usually takes one to two months for a bike to be completed if the requested model isn’t in inventory at the time it was commissioned.
For more information, go to bicimaquinas.com.