Repair Cafe can help keep stuff out of landfills

[trymahjong]

From CEC

 

Repair Cafes are putting the Fun in Functional: 

Keeping Things out of Landfills and Building Community

by Susie Hairston

 

The John Neighbor’s Activity room at the West U Community Center was abuzz with activity on a recent Saturday. Tools, tape, twine, wiring, and brightly colored fabrics were everywhere. Some people were holding lamp stands while others were working on the connections for the wires; sewing machines were running; a huge automated toy crane was being reassembled; and everyone was happily chatting. It had the feeling of a barn raising or a quilting bee — people in the community coming together, sharing their expertise, helping each other, and having fun.

 

The West U branch of Harris County Public Library (HCPL), in conjunction with the Harris County Office of Sustainability, was hosting a repair cafe in partnership with the City of West U, organized by HCPL’s Laura Smith and West U Library Branch Manager John Harbaugh. 

 

Repair cafes are meetings between people who want to fix things and keep them out of the landfill. The fixers volunteer their time and expertise, and while they are fixing items, they teach the individuals who brought things in for repair how to fix things for themselves. 

 

Holding repair cafes is an international grassroots movement that is about reducing waste, overconsumption, and planned obsolescence (when companies purposefully make things in such a way that they will break in a few years so you will buy a new one). The movement wants to re-inspire us to believe we can do things for ourselves in, with, and for our communities. Individuals are drawn to repair cafes for the sense of fun and community they offer in addition to their sustainable practice of fixing things rather than throwing them in a landfill.

 

Martine Postma organized the first ever repair cafe in Amsterdam in 2009. It was such a success that she formed the non-profit Repair Cafe Foundation. Now, repair cafes span the globe, and approximately 44,000 items are repaired at them each month.

 

Repair cafes were started in the Houston area in 2014 when Transition Houston and the City of Houston Green Building Resource Center (GBRC) partnered on the project. CEC board president Steve Stelzer, who, at the time, was the Program Director of the GBRC and a member of Transition Houston, got the ball rolling. Repair cafes were held once a year at the TXRX maker space because, as Stelzer said, “we thought since people who are using the TXRX space are fixers, it was the ideal place to hold a repair cafe and recruit volunteers.” And indeed, some of the makers at TXRX did volunteer for the repair cafes, but Stelzer said they also recruited people from connections they had through the GBRC, City of Houston, and Transition Houston.

 

Stelzer, who retired from the GBRC this year, wanted to ensure that repair cafes continued even though he would no longer be in his role with the city. He also wanted to make repair cafes accessible to people all across the wider metro area, so he reached out to Harris County Director of Sustainability Lisa Lin and asked if the county would partner on it. Fortuitously, Lin told him she had libraries asking to join the Sustainable Libraries Initiative and become certified as a sustainable library system. Doing repair cafes at the libraries would help HCPL achieve that goal.

 

The first repair cafe was held by Harris County Public Library in November 2023 at the Freeman branch near NASA. A lot of NASA engineers volunteered as fixers for that event and some of those have continued to volunteer at repair cafes at other library branches. 

 

Interested in volunteering or getting something fixed at a repair cafe? Check out events at your local Harris County Public Library. The next HCPL Repair Cafe is on Saturday, November 16th from 11- 3 at the Maud Smith Marks Branch Library.

 

The Repair Cafe Foundation website also helps you find upcoming repair cafes and has video tutorials on how to fix specific items so you can repair things yourself or train yourself to volunteer at an upcoming repair cafe in your community. It also has a toolkit on how to start your own repair cafe.  https://www.repaircafe.org/en/

 

At the West U library event 46 people brought 71 items:  59 were repaired, 5 were partially repaired, and 7 could not be fixed. Among the things repaired were toasters, lamps, pants, a beloved stuffed animal, an automated toy crane, a sewing machine, sweaters, pajamas, chair upholstery, and a bird cage with a mechanical bird that was no longer tweeting. Those who brought items for repair learned about how to fix things for themselves and had a lot of fun. As each person left with their now functional item, Lisa Lin took photos of them with their item and the people who fixed it — a lovely commemoration of a fun and productive day making things useful again and preventing waste.