Cambridge Council runs occasional anti-fly-tipping days where the waste team bring a large skip to an urban flytipping hotspot and encourage people to throw away unwanted items. Others can come and take away non-electronic items, but any surrendered electronics cannot be rehomed, even if working. The hotspots are typically low income areas where people are less likely to own cars or be willing to pay the council £25 to collect bulky waste.
I visited one last year and saw a large number of items which were still working or barely broken. There were 2 overflowing “biffa bins” (660L) of electronics, as they said it had been more popular than usual.
I want to have a “repair triage” marquee on site that can intercept items before they are thrown away and encourage people to visit a repair cafe. My plan is to have experienced repairers assessing the items to make a guess at the repairability. In my experience, I can often judge roughly how long it will take to diagnose a fault after just a few seconds with the item, in many cases also being able to estimate the time needed to repair.
We could then direct them to local repair businesses, repair cafes or other routes to prevent their item being shredded.
There will be a slight challenge in dealing with fixable but unwanted (FBU) items, so I want to have charity shop staff on site who would be able to take away still-working and FBU items. Depending on the volume of FBU items, we would send experienced repairers to the charity on an arranged date.
- Any thoughts on this?
- I have emailed 2 local charities (Emmaus and Cambridge ReUse) that deal with large items including electricals. Neither have replied. Any thoughts on making this more attractive to them? Or charities that would take this? I estimate we would need 1 member of staff from them who could identify items they do and do not want from FBU and working streams.