"Repair Movement Reinvigorates Fix-It Culture"

[cdev]

https://appvoices.org/2020/07/21/repair-movement-reinvigorates-fix-it-culture/

This is an excerpt from an article on the Appalachian Voice web site about a positive repair and education movement in the Southeast of the US that seems to have been put into limbo by the Coronavirus epidemic.


Repair Communities


Members of the Repair Hub in Boone, N.C., helped to sew items brought in at monthly events pre-COVID-19. Photo courtesy of Repair Hub

One of these groups is the Repair Hub in Boone, N.C. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Repair Hub community hosted events each month where members of the public bring items to volunteers who help repair them for an optional donation. Andy Groothuis, who founded the Repair Hub in 2019, says the repair process involves aspects of reducing and reusing which, he says, “are two sides [of the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ waste hierarchy] that are usually, I find, overlooked.”
Groothuis states that when people have broken items, they either dump them in a drawer with the intention of fixing it “one day,” or, more often than not, he says, “they are going to throw them out, and that item probably could have been used.”

Similarly, the Cville TimeBank Repair Café in Charlottesville, Va., which started in 2015, hosts public events twice a year where participants can bring up to three items to be repaired for free. The president of the Repair Cafe, Kathy Kildea, says Repair Café is a community tool that gives people access to skills such as electrical work and sewing that they may not have the resources to access on their own.

Kildea says the project is about “utilizing those skills you have at your doorstep.”

One of the focuses of the Cville TimeBank Repair Cafe is education. People bringing in items are encouraged to sit with the “fixers” and watch repairs as they take place. There is also a “kids’ take-apart table,” where kids get to explore the inner-workings of items. These interactions foster curiosity and enable people to fix future goods that may break.

“If you think any repair is beyond your means or beyond your ability, you’re kind of sunk,” Kildea says. “But if you come at it from the point of, ‘Well, there’s just a piece in here that’s not functioning properly, I just need to figure out which one it is.’ Fostering that sense of curiosity is important not just for the kid, but for any customer that comes in with something they want to get fixed.”

[eti]

That people need TELLING this, and that the ones telling them think this is a "movement", makes me cringe, and also laugh at how dumb the world now is.

[SerieZ]

I find it rather cute more so than than cringe to be honest.

[bsfeechannel]

If it has a manifesto, it is a movement.

[cdev]

We do need to make being a maker and recycler natural for people.

To invent, save money, repair and reuse.
And avoid the future depicted in Wall-e.

[Shock]

Been repairing for decades now, I've had so many movements I've lost count. Never needed someone tell me I had to take part in a movement with other people though, I find it comes naturally on my own.

More seriously though, I don't need business owners to promote a movement for me especially when there is strong commercial motivation behind them doing so. There is nothing worse than a business trying to coax you into a movement and tell you it's in their your best interest.

The problem isn't with repairing things anyway, it's selling cheap Chinese manufactured rubbish and pumping out dozens of different products each year to capture the market share of the grass feeders. The only way you are going to change that is educate em while they are young, not wait for stuff to break.

It's not even in my best interests to have said that, but everything breaks eventually. Must be "purer" version of selflessness, I think I can feel another movement coming on.

[eti]

We do need to make being a maker and recycler natural for people.

To invent, save money, repair and reuse.
And avoid the future depicted in Wall-e.

And we def NEED to stamp out cringey "branding" of "movements" - ugh. It's SO contrived.

[EEVblog]

Louis Rossmann did a video talking about setting up some sort of official right to repair body with certification etc.

[Shock]

The US needs  a similar consumer law to Australia/NZ/EU which offers some protection at least against pump and dump type products and warranties. Moving to mandatory 3/5/10 years coverage is a good idea as well as return to source recycling. Sure it will cost the consumer more in the short term but it will be a clearer path to sustainability.

This would eventually lead to the return of authorized repairers and parts availability model which has worked perfectly fine in the past. Then no need to start a counterfeit battery replacement "right to repair" club.

[paulca]

I'm afraid since the Health & Safety movement killed this idea a decade ago.

Once a court found that a disclaimer like, "Live parts inside, no user serviceable components inside.  DO NOT OPEN" was not enough to prevent getting sued when a user opened it and hurt themselves...  they started making things unservicable, unopenable, undocumented and removed all hint or ability to repair it yourself, so when someone hurts themselves the company can get away saying there was not even a whiff of suggestion that a user should open it.

In the UK we used to buy white goods without a plug and it was the users job to wire the plug after sale.  This changed to all products having to be fitted with moulded plugs which cannot be opened.  Just an example.  There are more.

It's also cheaper to glue, heat stake, rivet or spot weld things together to produce cheaper goods.

It's come down to recycling getting cheaper with cheaper labour than repairing things. 

Consider cars though.  They are repairable, almost indefinitely if you can avoid rust.  However, take my car for example.  If there is a failure involving several components, they have to be replaced as a set.  A principle example would be if you lose a key.  The insurance will not insure it while a valid key is out in the wild.  A new key (OEM) is £350.  However, the key code is burnt into the ECU in ROM at manufacturing time, they claim for security.  So, in order to reinsure the car you need 2 new keys, the door locks replaced and a new ECU.  Total cost at a dealership, £2500-3500.  Most lost key insurance is £1500 or less.

[julian1]

Rossmann's last video on this topic was pretty interesting.

After appearing before Congress (congressional investigating committee?), Apple made concessions, and now allows registered independent repairers access to components - although Apple makes it difficult.

For example he is only permitted to order parts in single line-item quantities, and is not allowed to hold any kind of stock or inventory, which makes the turnaround (weeks) for common board repairs completely unreasonable.

In addition he has to submit his customer's mobile IEMI with each purchase order - which is intrudes on his customers privacy, and means Apple gets to collect all of his business's customer information and sales figures.

 

[Shock]

It's not in Apples best financial interest to repair anything of course, but passing the torch from one company to another won't solve the underlying issue either.

Consumer rights need to come first. Warranties of 3-5 years depending on the device. Batteries and LCD screens should be easily user replaceable, parts available at an affordable price to avoid "beyond economical repair" type situations. Once out of warranty the consumer can choose if they need a repairer or not.

This will remove cheap and unsustainable products from the lower end of the market by attrition instead of rewarding them undercutting their competition with poor quality substitutes.