It’s Wednesday, August 13, and I’m one pair of pants richer.
On a recent hot August Sunday, I steel myself while walking into a small crowd of people under the shade of several brightly colored canopies in Congress Square Park in downtown Portland. Sheepishly, I approach two women sitting at a table behind sewing machines and pull out a beloved pair of black linen pants that have started to wear through.
Vrylena Olney takes the pants and starts pulling out bits of spare fabric to color match for a patch. She settles on a dark gray square of linen.
“Normally, I come in, and it's just like wall to wall repairs, and pretty much everybody has blown out the crotch on their pants,” she says, laughing. “You are in very good company.”
Olney is a sewing volunteer at Ripe for Repair, a roving, semi-regular repairs meetup in the Portland area. Popping up in rotating venues, community spaces and parks throughout the city, the meetup includes bike and gear repairs, electricians fixing everything from lamps to laptops, blenders, and microwaves, volunteer sewists patching and hemming, sewing buttons and fixing zippers, and even occasionally a cobbler fixing shoes and a jewelry-maker mending accessories — all for free.
Despite being reparable, malfunctioning coffee machines, electric kettles, vacuum cleaners and the like frequently end up in landfills. And appliances aren’t made to last — they’re made cheaper and more quickly than in generations past, contributing to carbon dioxide emissions and accelerating climate change. The EPA estimates that of the 2.2 million tons of small appliance waste created in a year, only about 5.6% is recycled.
Lead organizer Ali Mann started Ripe for Repair in Portland nearly two years ago, hoping to learn something new.
“I sent an email to like 50 people I knew in town, and said, ‘Hey, I'd like to learn how to fix stuff. And some of you I know know how to fix stuff, and who wants to get together and see what we can accomplish?’”
The meetup has since become a fixture in the community. But Mann says Appleton, Bath, Brunswick, Kittery and South Portland have all held either recurring or one-off repair fairs, and there’s a word-of-mouth repair meetup at the YMCA in Belfast that’s been around far longer than any of them.
“They don't advertise it at all,” says Mann. “The people who know about it know about it, and they have enough volunteers, and enough people come in to keep going.”
Community repair workshops started gaining in popularity more than a decade ago. Organizations like Fixit Clinic and Repair Cafe now offer hundreds of repair events in cities across North America each year.
The Repair Association has spent more than a decade trying to get manufacturers to make it easier for people to fix their own products. Gay Gordon-Byrne, the consumer advocacy group’s executive director, tells NPR that the repair options companies offer are often inconvenient or expensive — and sometimes both.
"They are not in the business of fixing stuff," Gordon-Byrne told NPR’s Chloe Veltman. "They would rather your stuff falls apart and dies and you have to go back to the store."
These days, online how-to videos are getting millions of hits. But while a YouTube video probably exists for just about every type of repair these days, Mann says an in-person repair meetup is different: you don’t have to buy the tools needed (imagine investing in a whole cobbler setup to fix your shoes), and if the going gets tough, there are other people around to troubleshoot with. That avoids relegating items to the dreaded ‘I’ll fix it later’ pile or junk drawer.
She says people’s reasons for showing up to the repair fair run the gamut: keeping waste out of landfills; valuing sustainability and avoiding buying something new; emotional attachment to items and wanting to save them; saving money by fixing something they already own; and curiosity – wanting to learn how to be more handy.
“I'm looking at a microwave and an Atari right now. I know somebody fixed a vacuum cleaner and a tape deck,” Mann says. “When we first started, there were a lot of electric kettles. For some reason, things will come in waves. One month, we had like three sewing machines show up. Another, stand mixers. In the fall, it’s backpacks with zippers.”
Over at the electronics table, three volunteers huddle over a laptop that has stopped working. The likely culprit, they surmise, is spilled soft drink: the inner parts are all sticky. But they all pause on the laptop when a woman approaches towing a tall, magnificently tacky lamp made out of multicolor empty Folgers coffee cans stacked on top of each other.
“It doesn’t work, and my husband would rather I throw it out, he hates this thing,” she says. “But I love it, and I’m going to keep it.”
I leave them to it. Back at the sewing table, Olney has almost finished with my pants. As she runs the sewing machine back over the area, reinforcing the quilted patch, she walks me through what stitches she’s used, so I can try to replicate it myself next time.
“But if you get stuck, or you want me to fix it again,” she says, “come back.”
National Weather Service issues heat advisory for interior Maine
The Maine Center for Disease Control is urging people to stay out of the sun and in air conditioning if possible as temperatures reach into the 90s this week.
EPA strips Maine of $62 million solar grant
In a letter to the state, the Environmental Protection Agency said the recent Republican tax law, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, revoked the $7 billion "Solar for All" national grant program.
Bigelow Labs researching zooplankton's role in carbon storage
The most common type of carbon offset is usually land-based, like reforestation projects. Marine carbon sequestration is a newer field of study — researchers are hoping to better understand how carbon moves through the ocean.
Maine releases new guidelines for designing bird-safe public buildings
An estimated 50,000 birds die from colliding with glass windows each year in Maine's biggest city, according to Maine Audubon.
State foresters record first tree deaths in Maine from beech leaf disease
State foresters last week recorded the first deaths of beech trees from a disease that just arrived in the state four years ago and is now present in all 16 counties. Scientists say beech leaf disease could decimate a species that's common in Maine woods and an important food source for wildlife.
Particle size matters: why wildfire smoke is so harmful
Maine's air quality continues to suffer from lingering Canadian wildfire smoke. We asked health experts how exposure to smoky air harms our health.
Some amount of algae in a lake or coastal waters is normal — even beneficial. But when algae grows out of control, forming an algal “bloom,” it can overtake a body of water or, even worse, create toxic conditions.
In Greater New England
🛰️Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose
🌄EPA eliminates Solar for All Program that would have brought Vermont $60M
🌬️Are 17 turbines really running at Vineyard Wind? Here's what we saw by boat
🦠Vermont will try a different attack on cyanobacteria at state’s only ‘lake in crisis’
🎣CT trout fishing conservationists work to restore sections of Fairfield's Mill River
The United States is responsible for throwing out more stuff than any other nation in the world. According to the Public Interest Research Group, Americans generate more than 12% of the planet's trash, though we represent only 4% of the global population.
This week, let’s all do a trash audit. Popularized by zero-waste bloggers in the 2010s who tried to limit all of their trash to one Mason jar, trash audits have since come a long way. We know climate change and plastic pollution is no one person’s responsibility, and people have busy lives, kids, jobs — but we don’t have to do this perfectly to make a difference.
Here are a few ways to do this:
- For a household of one or two: For one week, challenge yourself to save all of your waste in one space, like a plastic bag within a tote bag, to carry with you throughout your day. Leave it in your car, etc. Analyze what you're generating and consider whether or not this waste can be avoided. Plastic spoons, coffee cups, takeout containers, what have you — just notice what your most common landfill items are.
- For a household of two or more: Maybe carrying your trash around isn’t realistic. Instead, before trash day, be brave! Throw on some dish gloves and sort your trash (outside or in the garage is best, on top of another trash bag). Is there a lot of organic matter? Maybe it’s time to figure out a compost strategy. Are recyclables ending up in there? Maybe it’s time to refresh the household’s recycling habits. Did someone throw away old socks? Maybe we need to establish a textile recycling bin.
In the future, we’ll talk more about specific replacements we can use to divert your waste stream from landfill. For now, getting clear on our habits is enough. After all, knowledge is power!
Till next time,
Molly
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