Author Archives: janetgunter

Support us through Ebay-Patagonia auction

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We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been chosen to receive proceeds from the online auction connected to the launch of the Ebay and Patagonia Common Threads partnership in the UK.

Common threads

Common Threads is more than just an online storefront/collaboration between Ebay and Patagonia. It is an initiative that aims to boldly change the way we consume.

Participants do not just shop for second hand Patagonia clothes, they sign a pledge to really live the 4 Rs (Reduce, Repair, Reuse and Recycle). Participants pledge to “wrest the full life out of every Patagonia product by buying used when I can, and selling what I no longer wear to keep it in circulation”.

Common Threads has successfully provided a marketplace for Patagonia clothes for reuse, via individual sellers, in the US since 2011 and now it is launching now in the UK.

For the launch, Ebay and Patagonia are sponsoring an auction, with some celebrity items – including a jacket worn by adventurer Ben Fogle – and we’re really excited to have been chosen as the only recipient of funds raised. Continue reading →

People who restart

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This post appeared first as a guest post on the RSA’s The Great Recovery blog.

Ten months into our activity, we have stopped more than once to pinch ourselves. Last year, when we started throwing Restart Parties, we only had the smallest group of volunteers. We just threw ourselves head long into our cause – to empower people to reduce waste – and what has always impressed us is the organic growth of our committed group of repairers. New repairers turn up at events, find us online, get referred by friends.

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We owe all of our momentum to our Restarters, a fun yet serious group. We would like to take a moment to introduce two of our committed repairers, and share their approach to repair.

Continue reading →

Prototype with us

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prototype

Used on CC license from Flickr user celinecelines

This Friday, we will pitch our platform to the Urban Prototyping Hackathon at Imperial College. The themes of the UPLondon Festival really resonate with The Restart Project: sustainability, the city and entrepreneurship. The platform we are proposing is at the intersection of all three themes – our aim is to create a space for the urban crowd to generate its own bigdata about where to repair, which will feed a future economy of maintenance and repair.

Please read more about our concept, and if you are a have skills in the areas of coding, mapping, UX, gamification, and service design, why not come along and help us prototype something really game-changing? (And potentially help us win prize money!)

A day at the Market

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We had a fun, blustery day at Brixton Market – our first – on Easter Saturday. We have been keen to pop-up in a market, to promote repair “elsewhere”. Our idea is not to take business away from local repairers, but instead to encourage people to repair and reuse in a place where they are receptive to new ideas. So the Give and Take Day organised by Brixton Market was the perfect opportunity. Continue reading →

We’re official!

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As of Monday we are an official legal entity! For the past nine months, we were an informal project running on fire-in-the-belly, one small grant, good will and lots of help from our friends.

While we have trouble categorising ourselves – we called ourselves “Project” for a reason, we have a social project which we feel transcends structure – we have decided to become a charity. Specifically a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. Continue reading →

Training, and saving laptops

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Brent training

We had our first, more formal training this week, at the invite of Brent Libraries. Our Restarters worked with 10 people who had signed up for our “Speed Up Your Laptop” training.

Many of the people – mostly women! – in attendance were owners of “hand-me-up” laptops from their children. None wanted to give up on their laptops, but really did feel they needed some basic maintenance skills. Continue reading →

Repairing with young product designers

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We had an excellent day yesterday at Central Saint Martins, one of the University of the Arts London campuses, most associated with product design. We started the day with a lecture to second year students about what we have learned working with hundreds of frustrated electronics owners over the past nine months.

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Our top 4 messages to future product designers… Continue reading →

Repair Rickshaw Concept

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Photo remixed from Flickr user sarahandiain on CC license

Since we got started, we have been interested in bringing repair back into public spaces and getting people engaged in a hands-on way. This post is about how we arrived at one of our most exciting concepts.

Last year, we participated in OpenIDEO’s E-Waste Challenge which asked the question: How can we manage e-waste & discarded electronics to safeguard human health & protect our environment?

We had experimented with OpenIDEO earlier but really felt the creative and collaborative power of its global, online collaboration with this challenge. We were interacting with professionals from a number of different fields, and from around the world, on the issue of preventing electronic waste. Now in 2013, we plan to take some of the best ideas from the challenge and prototype them, including mashing two of our favourite concepts together. Continue reading →