Many of you will be familiar with London Restarter, who have had repair sessions in the space before. This weekend, they hosted the first international event for fixers. Attendees from Argentina, Tunisia, the USA, Canada, Norway (where it is illegal to repair your own appliances - really), Italy and the UK discussed policy, messaging, education and organisation. Keynote speakers included Kyle, founder of iFixit.com and leading researchers in the field. Several attendees were also members of Maker Spaces around the UK.
All this made me think about the oft-discussed issue of waste, and what we do with the outputs of our Space. Do we have a policy on repair vs. replacement? And what to do with equipment we don’t need any more? For example, the Maker Space Leicester rep had an interesting story about receiving donated equipment but then being stuck with an expensive and complicated disposal process due to internal components. A cautionary tale.