Back in February a Sechelt church partnered with Rona to offer a daylong recycling service: anyone could drop by with their household appliances and pile them onto pallets that Rona would then ship over to the Gibsons Recycling Depot.
By the time Bryan Cramer, founding member of Repair Café, arrived, six pallets were ready for the depot. The moment he introduced himself and explained the Repair Café fixes appliances like the ones on the pallets, an organizer replied, “If only you’d been here five minutes ago, someone dropped off that vacuum and said it was working last week.”
For Cramer, the depot-bound vacuum cleaner was an unnecessary recyclable. “It’s getting that awareness out in the community that before you recycle, you try to repair it,” he said of the experience. And it’s that mentality that inspired him and Wayne Harjula to establish Repair Café.
In the past year, approximately 10 volunteers have helped repair more than 180 items, according to Cramer. Of those, 90 per cent were simple fixes. For example, an automatic toaster from the 1950s was saved after a volunteer managed to knock out a few breadcrumbs that kept triggering an internal sensor.
The group currently runs out of the Gibsons Public Library and Sunnycrest Mall and has just announced it will be expanding to Sechelt. Its first session will be held in the centre of Trail Bay Mall from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 23. Volunteers will be appearing once a month at the mall for the next three months, and organizers are also hoping to schedule time at the Sechelt Public Library. The Repair Café takes place on average twice a month in Gibsons.
“The overall intention has always been to expand to the majority of the Coast,” said Cramer, who also hopes to see sessions take place in Madeira Park. The aim is to have established repair cafes in each community, with dedicated tools and parts, such as soldering irons and screwdrivers.
The Repair Café was recently awarded $1,500 from the Town of Gibsons and last fall organizers won $880 from the Sunshine Coast Regional District’s Waste Reduction Initiatives Program. “It’s very close to many of us in the Coast maker community, to try and divert waste as much as possible,” Cramer said.
While recycling is effective, Cramer believes it should never be prioritized over the other two R’s: reducing and reusing. “You go to the recycling depot and you see everybody with big smiles on their faces, and they’re throwing their stuff into different bins, but the reality behind that is the R’s are in a very specific order.”
For Cramer, the goal should be to reduce consumption and prevent items from entering the energy-intensive recycling process in the first place.
“If we can get back in that mindset of not being such a disposable society, we could save things and make an impact, and not just a happy-go-lucky fluffy impact. But an actual proper impact,” he said.
To stay up to date with Repair Café events, you can follow them on Facebook.
