We are very happy to announce that The Restart Project is a partner of “Sharepair”, a new project to help build a “digital support infrastructure for citizens in the repair economy”. It runs through 2023.
The aim of the initiative is to reduce the amount of waste from electrical and electronic goods, which is one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the European Union. While consumption of electrical and electronic equipment is very high throughout North-West Europe, the region is home to a growing citizen repair movement, fighting back against this upsurge in waste.
However, while consumers indicate a high willingness to repair, there is still a large gap to be filled between what the network of Restart Parties and Repair Cafes can do, and what a thriving repair ecosystem could deliver, including better signposting and access to reliable professional repairers.
The project is primarily funded by Interreg North West Europe, which covers 60% of the budget of the initiative. ShaRepair focuses on a region of Europe including the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, most of France and Netherlands and part of Germany. The project is led by the City of Leuven in Belgium, and brings together a broad network of universities, cities working towards a circular economy, community repair networks and other organisations researching and advocating for repair.
Sharepair aims to help citizen repair initiatives increase their impact and skills through the use of digital tools. It also targets consumers at home with better access to information on repair options, and guidance to access professional repair services. Some of the partners will also work on a database of open source designs for 3d-printing spare parts.
Restart is involved in multiple aspects of Sharepair, here are the main ones:
- Open Repair Alliance: with partners we’re working towards improving the Open Repair Data Standard, and to continue expand International Repair Day in coming years
- We’ll increase our focus on making the most of the repair data collected at community events, include using it to inform future policies on repair at European level
- We’ll continue develop Restarters.net to make sure the tools we create and the knowledge shared in the platform are accessible to the wide range of repair initiatives involved in the project
- We’re expanding our directory of repair businesses, while cooperating with cities in Belgium and the Netherlands developing their own version
- The next international edition of Fixfest will be co-funded by Sharepair
We’ll be posting updates as we make progress on our involvement in the project. For more information on Sharepair, visit its website.