The Edinburgh Remakery is a not-for-profit project that teaches people how to repair their own belongings, for two very good reasons.
Our ‘throwaway society’ has created mountains, and even ‘islands’, of landfill that we will eventually run out of room to house. (There are specific areas called “garbage patches” in the sea where particles of of broken-down litter give the water a soupy consistency.)
At the same time, young people are losing the skill of fixing things, as the men and women who fixed everything from lawnmowers to prams and shoes retire and their stores are replaced by ones selling cut-price new goods.
Sophie Unwin, the brains behind the Edinburgh Remakery and its parent group Remade in Edinburgh, Scotland, had her brainwave after spending a year in Nepal – a year in which she created less than a dustbin of rubbish, because the country still has an ingrained habit of repairing and recycling, often because that’s the only option available.
Now, through the Edinburgh Remakery, which receives some government funding as well as donations, people can take low-cost lessons on repairing computers, reupholstering furniture, binding books, doing leatherwork, using a sewing machine and more. The remakery also sells repaired donated goods.
“When I came back to the UK I saw the potential for building a business based on repair education,” Unwin told thirdforcenews recently. “In Edinburgh we started up in 2011 with a group of volunteers and £60. In the last year we tripled our turnover to £200,000, diverted 200 tonnes of waste and trained over 1,000 people in repair skills.”
Australia has its own versions of the concept, one of which are the ‘repair cafes’ in the major cities. And enthusiasts can join iFixit.com, the global site for people who want to repair things, where there are repair guides, a forum to troubleshoot on and helpful hints and tips.
But will it catch on, at a time when a t-shirt can be bought for a few dollars and tech products for not much more? What do you think?