Re-Use and Repair
What the Bower does could be
described as life extension for
household items.The Bower actively
encourages a repair culture within
the community. In the past we have
done so through educating with skills
workshops, fostering artistic
opportunities, promoting re-use
craft, and seeking design ideas for
re-invention of waste items.
Nowadays we have consignees who
put to use their good craftsmanship
and turn something battered and
bruised to classic or chic.
Repair culture
For those of us at the Bower, re-use
is only one side of reducing waste.
Repair is its twin. Re-used items still
in the crappy condition in which they
were disposed are all too likely to be
returned to the waste stream soon.
But a repaired item, hinges working, wonky legs set straight and true, have extended lives
with their new custodians. The longer items stay out of the waste stream, the better.
But there is more to repair culture than this mending. For us, repair is an extended word,
meaning to restore, to renew, to renovate, and applies not only to the materiality of an
object, but abstract notions like strength and health.
In our grandparent's generation, manufactured items were used over and over again. Labour
was cheap, but resources were expensive. Waste dumps from their days were rather light
on re-usable items. And transformation was a natural expression....44-gallon drums became
rotund kitchen cupboards, kerosene tins seemed to be anything but kerosene tins (food
storage, chook nests, wall liners, cookers). The same applies today in many countries
labelled third-world economies.
Values
We look to their inventiveness as an inspiration for the revival of a repair culture, where to
throw something useful "away" was (and will be) morally culpable ("waste not, want not",
whatever its origin, is not a modern expression). But we have to recognise that our western
society, having broken out of earlier cycles of scarcity, has hardly had the time to culturally
adjust to the era of post-scarcity. The values of consumption rule in an economy that has,
across less than two generations, assembled the largest collection of non-durable, non-
repairable items outside of an official war munitions economy. And these items are intended
to last only for cycles of consumption. These can be limited by material obsolesence
(chipboard or melamine disintegration, nearly always irreparable), technological
obsolesence (analogue phones, x86 computers, and soon analogue TVs) or cultural
obsolesence (fashion, web consciousness, games processing needs, graphic sophistication).
Values of mass consumption are conspicuousness, fashion, convenience, replicability,
disposability, the pose of originality brought about by simply being the first to "own".
The only escape is to re-invest different values into the cycle of consumer production. It is
this reconfiguration of values that forms the core of "repair culture".
Intervening in the product life-cycle is one step...halting the conveyor belt to landfill of
the disposable and rethinking instead its final destination. This is re-use, part I: the
disposed item is redelivered to another consumer with values (or needs) that differ from
the disposer. A table becomes a desk, a family fridge becomes a second or "beer" fridge, or
the state-of-the-art finance computer becomes the kids email and homework machine.
Another intervention is that of "repair". One aspect of this is to restore to serviceability an
item that has been thrown out because it no longer works as it should (the chairleg is
broken, the turntable won't turn, the cupboard door won't open and close) Intervention
here is good for social values, as care must be applied to such items to maintain their life,
and care is a positive emotion to invest. Ultimately, repair must extend to the entire
ecosystem.
The other intervention crosses barriers relating to industrial mass production. "Repairing"
waste items by reconfiguring the meaning of their parts, turning circuit boards into
bookends or CD racks and pet food tins into handbags, a fridge into a food-smoker, a railway
trolley into a coffee table, bike cogs into a garden seat. When this intervention takes place,
the output is more of the nature of a handmade than industrial commodity. Rather than the
object transforming dramatically (the components often remain visible), what happens is
that different values are built in to objects by "repair". These values are to do with
usefulness and endurance, with skill and craftsmanship, with creativity and uniqueness,
subtlety, humour, pertinence, and with care and pride. There is no necessity for craft to
rely upon primary resources to manufacture, only upon resources that can be modified.
Relationships
When these values spread to and are taken up by sections of the community, interesting
things begin to happen. Labour becomes positive (many "repairers" spend hours almost
every day at "work", enjoying themselves), skip bins begin to fill with possibilities rather
than refuse, creativity emerges without art classes, fresh skills are sought out, as they
extend one's capabilities, originality emerges across the face of industrial mass consumption.
New relationships are made, where co-operation becomes the key to completing restorative
works, or where one person's project answers another's need uniquely. No-one from inside
the repair culture could morally avoid the responsibility towards an item facing disposal
that has "potential" to be re-used in some form. Such items are either kept for use, re-use,
re-invention, or, in the rational economy emerging, are placed in the system of re-use
centres like the Bower for distribution.
Now these changes will not end waste, nor will they make the major contribution towards
ending waste. But discussions of the waste reduction hierarchy has placed far too much
emphasis upon "Reduce" and "Recycling", which still leave intact relationships (and in the
case of recycling even the values) between production and mass consumption.
The ideas of re-use within a "repair culture" transform on so many levels. Consumption is
reduced because raw materials and commodities are replaced; recycling is encouraged
because responsibility is accepted for materials that pass through our custodianship; re-use
becomes an inventive game, full of possibility.
Shall we play?