Repair Cafe Break the Throw Away Mindset What You Can Learn From Jackie Carter Part One

Partial transcript.

“The Repair Café was initiated by Martine Postma. Since 2007, she has been striving for sustainability at a local level in many ways. Martine organised the very first Repair Café in Amsterdam, on October 18, 2009. It was a great success.

Not competing with professional repair specialists

The Repair Café Foundation sometimes gets asked whether access to free repair get-togethers is competing with professional repair specialists. The answer is; quite the opposite. Organisers want to use Repair Cafés across the whole country to focus attention on the possibility of getting things repaired. Visitors are frequently advised to go to the few professionals still around.

Furthermore, people who visit Repair Cafés are not usually customers of repair specialists. They say that they normally throw away broken items because paying to have them repaired is, in general, too expensive. At the Repair Café they learn that you don’t have to throw things away; there are alternatives.”

“I’ve started the first Repair Cafe here in Idaho, USA.”

“I try to do as much as I can to contribute to conservation efforts.”

“I read about it three years ago and I knew it was perfect for my community here in Moscow.  Sustainability is a really big deal here.”

“I forgot about it actually because I’m the type of person who can throw a party and nobody comes.”

“Two years after reading about it I attended a library conference.  One of the workshops offered was on this very thing.  People from a library in Alberta, Canada lead that workshop.  I learned how to set up a Repair Cafe.  That’s how I started.”

“The board here at the Latah County Library District was open to this and excited.  Everybody has been very supportive.”

“This idea is growing globally.  On the website for Repair Cafe there is a global map that you can see where they’re located.”

“It’s not expensive to run a Repair Cafe.  My biggest expense is the venue.  I purchased basic tools but volunteers brought their own tools.  They have been so enthusiastic!  One volunteer brought in bags of tools.  I did invest in various types of glues.”

“The volunteers like to tinker.  They have fun with their skills.”

“The Repair Cafe is free to the public.  It’s a place where people can bring in items needing to be fixed.  I want visitors to also learn how to repair things themselves so that they can see their belongings in a different way.”

“The common mindset now is that when we buy something it will last three years and then we buy a new model.  That causes problems for the environment and we are battling this all of the time.”

“The ‘cafe’ part is a little corner where people can read books on repairs.  That’s where the library comes in handy.  Cookies and coffee are served.”

“I really like Repair Cafe.  There are other types out there but I like this model.  I bought the kit.  By starting this it put Moscow Idaho on the Repair Cafe map.”

“Repair Cafe has stations.  The Clothing and Textile station is very popular.  The volunteers love teaching others their craft.”

“There used to be a Maytag commercial where the Maytag repair man was lonely because he never got called out to fix anything.  Items were made to last.  It seems that today the items are built for the benefit of the manufacturer and that frustrates the consumer.”

THIS ENDS PART 1 OF THIS EPISODE.  TO CONTINUE LISTENING AND TO READ MORE ABOUT THE REPAIR CAFE PLEASE OPEN PART 2 FOR REPAIR CAFE.