The benefits of repair cafes

This summer, I finally decided to visit a repair cafe. The pop-up fix-it shops have become trademarks of many Toronto neighbourhoods, especially areas like Parkdale/High Park, where I live. Their aim is simple — to create a space where people can learn how to fix their own items without having to pay for repairs or buy something new.

My mom and I brought our old DVD player/VCR combo to a pop-up on Lansdowne Avenue. First of all, this location is an emblem of recycling art. It used to be a convenience store, but in recent years, it’s been transformed into a vibrant public arts space, available to rent and for collaborations.

The repair cafe is run by a large group of volunteers. My mom and I signed up at the front and were later greeted by a nice man named Rene who cracked open our DVD/VCR and got to work. Repair cafes are meant to act as a DIY learning opportunity, so you can sit next to the fixer while they diagnose and treat your item. That way, it feels like you have a lot of control over the process—and you can learn a bit about why your item is acting up and you what you could do next time to fix it.

I personally learned from Rene what that red laser does to make the DVD play. We opened up the player and watched the disk spin, and I snuck a peek at the tiny red light while Rene explained that it was reading perfectly fine. It’s hard to diagnose a problem that only happens sometimes. Though we didn’t end up fixing the player, I gained a lot of good knowledge about the item, and Rene helped me consider whether I should and where I could buy a refurbished one, which would run just as well as a new one.

Electronic waste can be hazardous to the environment due to the toxic chemicals, such as mercury and lead, that many electronics carry. According to a study by Statistics Canada, E-waste skyrocketed in 2016, but there’s also been a rise in electronic recycling. In 2012, Canadian households produced 14.3 million tonnes of waste, up 27 percent from 2002. During the same time period, waste diversion also increased to 4.7 million tonnes, up from 2.8 million tonnes. This means more waste was produced, but there were also more options created to deal with that waste besides throwing it in the garbage. The study found that the increase in waste diversion was due to the growth of alternative options for Canadians to reduce their electronic waste. One of those alternative options is repair cafes, which also, from my experience, encourage you to recycle and buy used. The pop-up cafes are especially important for the many folks who don’t have the time to research electronic recycling locations. Some recycling locations don’t accept broken items, and some electronics, like VCR tapes, are hard to recycle.

But it’s not just electronics that repair cafes fix, it’s any household item. That means things like plastic household appliances, jewellery, umbrellas—almost anything else you can think of. Most items end up in the landfill if we decide we don’t want them, and we are encouraged by corporations to buy new ones. The advertising industry thrives off of “the next best thing,” and encourages the idea that newness is more valuable than repair. Companies that contribute to e-waste, and many other kinds of waste, are complicit in making the products that produce the waste, profiting off those products and often poorly paid labour, and advertising those products in a way that encourages spending.

Ad campaigns by governments tend to focus on what we as people can do to stop the planet’s demise. Though human beings are also complicit in the global waste epidemic, this targeted approach tends to overly shame individuals. This blame draws attention away from the government-supported corporations that drive this behaviour in the first place. Such corporations include the questionable brand of Coca Cola, with their recycling campaign ‘Love Story’ that tried to show consumers that they could recycle their bottles. It’s hard to attack Coca Cola for their water waste and unfair worker treatment because they sponsor so many media outlets, like Mother Nature Network, which allow them to perpetuate their image of sustainability even though they’re a wasteful company. It’s the same for many other influential corporate giants who perpetuate unethical practices and environmental racism towards Indigenous communities and other communities of colour.

The concept of repair cafes has no doubt been further popularized recently by the ever-pressing issue of environmental waste and the lack of affordable repair shops.

Though we as individuals are such a small perpetrator of the climate crisis percentage-wise, it’s a small step to just see what changes we can make locally, and as a community, to combat waste in our cities. With such a lack of control over our environment, repair cafes can bring us a sense of empowerment. They perpetuate a collective responsibility to help each other combat waste. Because they run for free, there’s no economic burden placed on the client. Open to the public, they’re also accessible for people from all intersections of life.

Experiences like these instill within the community a responsibility to use some elbow grease in order to try and salvage something, not only for the sake of your environment but for your own independence. It’s really easy to just throw something out and buy a new one because you don’t want to expend energy trying to fix it. “Throw-out” culture is a huge problem when it comes to the amount of waste produced by human beings. If you really want to learn and develop your skills, the fixers can help you make a small step to reduce e-waste and to keep your product working.

I felt it was a space safe for me to learn a bit more about my items. The sense of community is strong because fixers are keen on getting to know their clients. I may have not had my DVD/VCR repaired, but there was something reparative about watching myself and others take one small step towards an alternative to creating waste.