Today’s Times newspaper features an article about how young people are increasingly interested in repair, along with interviews with @ugo and @Jamie_Hillier.
You can find the article here (careful, paywall): https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/young-are-learning-to-repair-gadgets-to-save-the-environment-and-cut-waste-gkx223qjq
Here’s the copy-pasted text for those who don’t want to climb over the paywall:
"Theirs is a generation synonymous with consumerism and fast fashion but the young are far more likely to pick up a screwdriver than the older generation would give them credit for.
Last week the Commons environmental audit committee spoke of “a waste tsunami” involving 155,000 tonnes of phones, tablets, laptops and other items being incinerated or taken to landfill every year.
However, figures suggest that environmentally conscious under-35s are keen to fix gadgets rather than throw them away.
People aged 18-24 have shown the biggest rise in interest in repairs: the number visiting Espares, a website that sells parts for cookers, vacuum cleaners and washing machines, to order spares or watch a repair video has risen by 319 per cent from 72,000 last year to 302,000 so far this year. The next biggest increase was for those aged 25-34, up by 53 per cent.
A survey of 5,000 people for CDSL, which owns Espares, suggests that three times more young people than over-65s would try to fix a broken appliance.
Ugo Vallauri, co-founder of the Restart Project, a charity that runs events at which people learn how to repair electrical items, said that young people were “extremely receptive” to the message that mending was better than replacing. He said: “Young people are excited by the opportunity to learn what’s inside the black boxes we own. They didn’t experience the time years back when products were repaired a lot more so it’s a discovery for them.”
In 2015 Jamie Hillier, 27, of Beckenham, southeast London, who is now a Restart volunteer, restored the wifi on his phone. He took it apart and found the problem was broken solder, which he reconnected using a heat gun. “I was so thrilled to see the little wifi symbol come on again,” he said. He has just fixed his parents’ ten-year-old washing machine, although they were ready to throw it away. He said the biggest problem was lack of service manuals and spare parts.
Yourfix, which teaches phone repairs, has also reported a lot of demand from young people.Philip Dunne, chairman of the environmental audit committee, said: “It is great news that so many of these initiatives are led by young people whose generation is likely to bear the brunt of a lack of action on excessive waste leading to degradation of the environment.”
