October 20 is International Repair Day and National Reuse Day

October 20th is National Reuse Day!!! Happy reusing! As described in an article from yesterday's Waste 360, "The day helps raise awareness about how much material Americans waste and how buying, using or donating reusable, reclaimed and remanufactured products can make a difference." Their article includes a slide show with ideas for ways you can incorporate reuse into your everyday life. (Though I would argue that composting is NOT reuse of food but rather recycling it; food donation, repurposing leftovers, using food scraps that weren't used in one recipe for a different one--THAT is reuse. Composting is important, it's just not the first thing one should do with food that is unwanted or unneeded, unless that food has already spoiled.)

Sadly there's really not much information available online regarding National Reuse Day, which the Reuse Alliance worked have recognized--not even on the Reuse Alliance web site. Austin, TX seems to take it seriously, extending their celebration throughout this entire weekend, as noted in this article from KXAN, Mayor Adler to announce sixth annual Reuse Day.

This day meant to encourage people to reuse is vastly overshadowed by America Recylces Day, which is coming up on November 15. That's sad not just because I clearly love reuse if I have an entire blog devoted to it; it's sad because reuse is a strategy one should always try to employ BEFORE recycling in order to make the most out of the "embodied resources" that have gone into the production of goods we use. A great deal of energy, water, and human labor goes into product manufacture and distribution, not to mention the extraction of materials from the natural environment (or their creation in a lab if the materials are synthetic). Even more resources go into the distribution of materials and completed products. While recycling is certainly important, if we can reuse an item or material before it is broken down into a state that can become feed stock in a new manufacturing process, we will be using our resources even more wisely.

But I take some comfort in the fact that October 20, 2018 is also the second annual International Day of Repair, and that is getting a bit more attention thanks to repaid advocates like the good folks at iFixit, the Restart Project in the UK (which actually launched the day in 2017; thank you Restarters!), and other members of the Repair Association.

I see repair as a form or reuse, though it can also be seen as a form of "reduce" (reduction), because through repair we keep items in their originally intended purpose for as long as possible, which is probably just a little higher on the waste management hierarchy than repurposing items prior to recycling (e.g. repairing a chipped mug and continuing to use it as a mug as opposed to repurposing a chipped mug into a bird feeder; both reduce waste through avoidance but might also be seen as reuse. That bird feeder is a reuse craft though, NOT a "recycling" or "recycled" craft no matter what anybody tells you, because you're not crushing the mug into feed stock for some new product, whatever that might be. And don't put mugs into your recycling bin; they don't get recycled and don't belong there.). 

To read more about why and how you should reduce your environmental impact through repair, see my recent post for the GLRPPR and ISTC blogs, #P2Week Day 2: Reducing Your Impact Through Repair. That post includes a list of Champaign-Urbana projects that foster repair, including my personal favorite, which I helped launch and have coordinated for the past few years, the Illini Gadget Garage. The Illini Gadget Garage provides free assistance to consumers, helping them troubleshoot and repair their electronics and small appliances. Right now, the Illini Gadget Garage is going through a transition. The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center will not continue to coordinate it in the future, but I'm exploring options for the project to be "adopted" by another entity on campus so it can continue to serve the community. Meanwhile, you can still set up an appointment to work on your gadgets by emailing illinigadgetgarage@gmail.com or by sending a message via Facebook.

To read more about International Repair Day, see the iFixit blog.  You can also check out the iFixit.org site which outlines why repair is important, how it contributes to sustainability and independence, and how repair creates jobs (According to iFixit, for every 1000 tons of electronics, landfillling creates less than 1 job, recycling creates 15 jobs, and repair creates 200 jobs.)

Reuse something! Fix something! Make an impact by making less of an impact on the world.