Dear Designers - fyi - a very sweet solution from the Netherlands - Bob

______________________

Robert K. Logan
Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD
Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto 
www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan

An Effort to Bury a Throwaway Culture One Repair at a Time


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Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times

Gathered around tables in what appeared to be delicate operations,
participants tried to fix items that had been set for the trash. 


By SALLY McGRANE


Published: May 8, 2012 


AMSTERDAM - An unemployed man, a retired pharmacist and an upholsterer took
their stations, behind tables covered in red gingham. Screwdrivers and
sewing machines stood at the ready. Coffee, tea and cookies circulated.
Hilij Held, a neighbor, wheeled in a zebra-striped suitcase and extracted a
well-used iron. "It doesn't work anymore," she said. "No steam." 


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Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times


One man came in to have the charger for his laptop repaired. 

Ms. Held had come to the right place. At Amsterdam's first Repair Cafe, an
event originally held in a theater's foyer, then in a rented room in a
former hotel and now in a community center a couple of times a month, people
can bring in whatever they want to have repaired, at no cost, by volunteers
who just like to fix things. 

Conceived of as a way to help people reduce waste, the Repair Cafe concept
has taken off since its debut two and a half years ago. The Repair Cafe
Foundation has raised about $525,000 through a grant from the Dutch
government, support from foundations and small donations, all of which pay
for staffing, marketing and even a Repair Cafe bus. 

Thirty groups have started Repair Cafes across the Netherlands, where
neighbors pool their skills and labor for a few hours a month to mend holey
clothing and revivify old coffee makers, broken lamps, vacuum cleaners and
toasters, as well as at least one electric organ, a washing machine and an
orange juice press. 

"In Europe, we throw out so many things," said Martine Postma, a former
journalist who came up with the concept after the birth of her second child
led her to think more about the environment. "It's a shame, because the
things we throw away are usually not that broken. There are more and more
people in the world, and we can't keep handling things the way we do. 

"I had the feeling I wanted to do something, not just write about it," she
said. But she was troubled by the question: "How do you try to do this as a
normal person in your daily life?" 

Inspired by a design exhibit <http://www.platform21.nl/page/4315/en>  about
the creative, cultural and economic benefits of repairing and recycling, she
decided that helping people fix things was a practical way to prevent
unnecessary waste. 

"Sustainability discussions are often about ideals, about what could be,"
Ms. Postma said. "After a certain number of workshops on how to grow your
own mushrooms, people get tired. This is very hands on, very concrete. It's
about doing something together, in the here and now." 

While the Netherlands puts less than 3 percent of its municipal waste into
landfills, there is still room for improvement, according to Joop Atsma, the
state secretary for infrastructure and the environment. 

"The Repair Cafe is an effective way to raise awareness that discarded
objects are indeed still of value," Mr. Atsma wrote in an e-mail. 

"I think it's a great idea," said Han van Kasteren, a professor at the
Eindhoven University of Technology <http://www.tue.nl/en/>  who works on
waste issues. "The social effect alone is important. When you get people
together to do something for the environment, you raise consciousness. And
repairing a vacuum cleaner is a good feeling." 

That was certainly true for the woman who brought her 40-year-old vacuum,
bought when she was a newlywed, to a Tuesday night Repair Cafe. "I am very
glad, very glad," she said as John Zuidema, 70, sawed off the vacuum's
broken nozzle. "My husband died, and there are all these little things
around the house that he used to fix." 

To some, the project's social benefits are as appealing as its ecological
mission. "What's interesting for us is that it creates new places for people
to meet, not just live next to each other like strangers," said Nina
Tellegen, the director of the DOEN Foundation
<http://www.doen.nl/web/home-1.htm> , which provided the Repair Cafe with a
grant of more than $260,000 as part of its "social cohesion" program,
initiated in the wake of the political murders of Pim Fortuyn, a politician,
in 2002, and Theo van Gogh, a filmmaker, in 2004. "That it's linked to
sustainability makes it even more interesting." 

Ms. Tellegen added that older people in particular find a niche at the
Repair Cafe. 

"They have skills that have been lost," she said. "We used to have a lot of
people who worked with their hands, but our whole society has developed into
something service-based." 

Evelien H. Tonkens, a sociology professor at the University of Amsterdam,
agreed. "It's very much a sign of the times," said Dr. Tonkens, who noted
that the Repair Cafe's anti-consumerist, anti-market, do-it-ourselves ethos
is part of a more general movement in the Netherlands to improve everyday
conditions through grass-roots social activism. 

"It's definitely not a business model," Ms. Postma said. She added that
because the Repair Cafe caters to people who find it too expensive to have
their items fixed, it should not compete with existing repair shops. 

The Repair Cafe Foundation provides interested groups with information to
help get them started, including lists of tools, tips for raising money and
marketing materials. Ms. Postma has received inquiries from France, Belgium,
Germany, Poland, Ukraine, South Africa and Australia. 

Tijn Noordenbos, a 62-year-old artist in Delft, started a Repair Cafe there
four months ago. 

"I like to repair things," he said, noting that the repair shops of his
younger days had all but vanished. "Now, if something breaks, you take it
back to the store and they say: 'We'll send it to the factory and it costs
you 100 euros just to check out the problem. It's better if you buy a new
one.' " 

William McDonough, an architect, said, "What happened with planned
obsolescence is that it became mindless - just throw it away and don't think
about it." His "cradle to cradle" design philosophy, which posits that
things should be built so that they can be taken apart and the raw materials
reused (though not necessarily repaired ad nauseam), also inspired Ms.
Postma. 

"The value of the Repair Cafe is that people are going back into a
relationship with the material things around them," Mr. McDonough said. 

Take, for example, Sigrid Deters's black H&M miniskirt with a hole in it. 

"This cost 5 or 10 euros," about $6.50 to $13, she said, adding that she had
not mended it herself because she was too clumsy. "It's a piece of nothing,
you could throw it out and buy a new one. But if it were repaired, I would
wear it." 

Marjanne van der Rhee, a Repair Cafe volunteer who hands out data collection
forms and keeps the volunteers fortified with coffee, said: "Different
people come in. With some, you think, maybe they come because they're poor.
Others look well-off, but they are aware of environmental concerns. Some
seem a little bit crazy." 

Theo van den Akker, an accountant by day, had taken on the case of the
nonsteaming iron. Wearing a T-shirt that read "Mr. Repair Café," Mr. van den
Akker removed the plastic casing, exposing a nest of multicolored wires. 

As he did, Ms. Held and Ms. van der Rhee discussed the traditional
Surinamese head scarves that Ms. Held, who was born in Suriname, makes for a
living. 

When Mr. van den Akker put the iron back together, two parts were left over
- no matter, he said, they were probably not that important. He plugged the
frayed cord into a socket. A green light went on. Rusty water poured out.
Finally, it began to steam. 


A version of this article appeared in print on May 9, 2012, on page A6 of
the New York edition with the headline: An Effort to Bury A Throwaway
Culture One Repair at a Time.