The Freecycle pages for East Fife are a wonderful celebration of our resourcefulness. Requests for ‘wanted’ items take all forms. There’s nothing too weird you can ask for – brake fluid, hairpins, tiles. You can always match something one person doesn’t need or want with someone who would appreciate it.
We know that all too well from our work at the second-hand St AndReuse store we run in St Andrews. Almost always, somebody will have what you need. And that’s a wonderful thing – for both the beneficiary and the donor.
Transition University of St Andrews offers a whole range of ways to engage with the climate crisis. This includes reuse, repair, bike loans and confidence-building cycling rides, tree and wildflower meadow planting. Not to mention citizen science work, low-cost vegetarian cooking and growing your own food.
We try to meet people where they are at, by offering something they need. This could be a pre-owned kettle, a mended jumper, exercise or to be among like-minded people). Sometimes people have a interest particular interest such as growing food, learning to sew, cook from scratch or boosting local biodiversity.
Reuse and repair are aspects of our work that have the greatest potential to reach the biggest audience. Everyone needs stuff and the quadruple win of reuse is very appealing. It saves money, reduces carbon emissions by avoiding brand new, diverts waste from landfill and very tangibly builds community.
Our customers know every item they scoop up at our store has been donated locally by students, staff, locals, children and businesses. A really special moment is when a donor witnesses this for themselves. They bring items in and get chatting to one of our volunteers and soon enough a customer will excitedly pops one or more of the donated items into their bag. It’s thrilling for donor, beneficiary and volunteer alike.
Our monthly Repair & Advice Café, launched in January, has a similar model. Customers are so appreciative of the time our wonderful repair volunteers give up to come and help people out in their community. They repair electricals, clothes, ceramics, musical instruments, shoes and bags. This keeps them keep them out of the bin and saves people heartache.
Nobody wants to see anything needlessly thrown away. Recently, one lady came in to get a kettle fixed, having bought a replacement part, and then donated it straight away to our Reuse store.
The International Repair Café Movement places responsibility for the items brought in for repair on the owner rather than the repairer. Customers sit with the repairer to learn about what they’re doing. In some cases they learn how to fix the item for themselves next time. One customer brought in a very expensive mixer that she thought was broken – it just needed a new fuse. Now she knows how to change the fuse herself if it blows another time.
The challenge for those of us working to face down the climate emergency is to empower people in the face of such immense adversity. We aim to frame their involvement in and support of our work as climate action, even if it’s not their primary motivation for engaging with us. At our Reuse store, we always ask people to weigh their items before they head off. We explain that we record how many kilos of ‘stuff’ we keep out of landfill and how much carbon that saves. We plan to do the same at our Repair & Advice Café. And I think we need to work on making this even more explicit.
Our dream is to create a space that combines our Reuse store with skill sharing (repair, craft and upcycling), our Toolshare library and a social space with comfortable seating, a kettle and biscuits. After a Christmas Upcycling session last December, one parent told me that she would never have got her 7-year-old son to engage in those activities at home. She felt there was real value in doing it in commune with others. We all know this to be true but witnessing it for yourself is very powerful.
Crucially, a combined Reuse-Repair-Share space would help reaffirm the all important community relationships that cut across the generations and bring together people from all backgrounds. This will create a whole that is so much greater than the sum of its parts.
Enabling individuals to tap into the transformative effect of finding purpose with others is what Transition is all about. Yes, this is climate action. But above all, it is about the opportunity to both help and be helped by each other.
Anya Hart Dyke, Project Officer and Skillshare Coordinatior, Transition University of St Andrews
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