
We hosted a celebration of International Repair Day event in Brixton at our home 3Space International House. It was the biggest event we’ve run in years. We wish every Restart Party could be like this!
We included a showcase of
Some of London’s great repair businesses including: Sarasfix (mobiles), Tfix (drone and game console repairs), Armstrong Audio, AGT (computer repair)
- Our London Repair Directory featuring 100 reliable businesses from 11 boroughs
- Rosie the Restarter, an electronics repair group by/for women and non-binary people
- Critical raw materials used to make mobile phones — through a disassembly exercise — and the importance of using them longer
Listening to independent repair businesses
Participants also enjoyed talks from London repair businesses Lovefone and Armstrong Audio about how big companies are threatening independent repair.
Highlights and stats
Volunteer Monique shared
Best moment of the day was the little girl who sat transfixed at the Rosie table and who later dragged her parents back to us to see more. She was persuaded to help fix a laptop and learned how to us a rubber air pump to clean the circuit board.
Fifty five people got together and attempted repairs on 27 items – 15 were fixed, 9 were repairable and 3 were end-of-life. Thirty-two kilos of electronic waste were prevented, and 679 kg of CO2 emissions saved through our efforts!
Repair Day elsewhere
As part of Repair Day, more than 300 repair events occurred in 27 countries around the world, from Bangalore in India to Porto Novo in Benin, from Munich in Germany to Buenos Aires in Argentina. Participants brought broken devices to be fixed with support from volunteer repair coaches.
International Repair Day occurs on the third Saturday of October, and it exists to celebrate the power of community repair to prevent waste and share skills.
The theme for Repair Day 2019 was Repair for Climate, Repair for Future, in homage to the movement of student strikers. Repairing and reusing products is increasingly understood as an important tool in the fight against climate crisis.