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Kelowna  

Don't toss it, repair it!

It turns out she only had to do a little dusting. 

After the headphone jack on Melanie Marcotte's stereo boombox started giving her trouble, she was faced with either the expense of buying a new stereo or trying to have it repaired. 

After learning about Kelowna's first ever Repair Cafe through her friend Jill Labbe, Marcotte brought her troublesome electronic to Okanagan College Saturday morning. 

"Cleaning it was the big fix, the main fix to maintain it," Labbe said. "It's also hard to find a CD and cassette player these days. Boombox, ghetto blaster, not many people these days know what that means."

Regional Waste Reduction Office facilitator Cynthia Coates said the movement started in the Netherlands in 2009. After seeing the success of similar programs in Vernon, the RWRO decided to try it in Kelowna. 

"At the waste reduction office our goal is to divert from the landfill and this fits really nicely," Coates said. "Recycling is always great, but if we can move people further up the chain and think reduce, reuse, repair, that's what we're trying to do here."  

Coates said many items they see thrown into landfills only require a simple fix to stay functional.

"The other idea is to get people comfortable with taking things apart on their own," she said. "We encourage the repairers to hand over the screwdriver and have the person who brought in the item take off the back of the toaster, see the workings themselves.

"We also encourage our experts to help the person troubleshoot it, what to look for, try to pass on some knowledge as well because that knowledge is going away. These people that know how to repair things, that demographic is getting smaller." 

Anita Zittlau, who works at the College, owns a lamp that's had a loose arm for more than 30 years.  

"I got the email and thought, 'well it's probably time to get it seen to,'" she said.

When Zittlau bought the lamp it already had a arm that moved more than it should have. It turns out the lamp, which was used when Zittlau bought it, had a factory defect and was missing a nut on one arm. A simple fix that could extend the life of the lamp by another 50 years.

Al Stewart, a retired power engineer was working on the lamp Saturday morning. He said this is one of the easier fixes a person can do themselves.

"I retired from industry, all my friends always bring everything to me, so I thought 'this sounds like a fun thing to do,'" he said. "I also find fixing stuff like this therapeutic, so it was a good deal."

About 50 people took advantage of the Repair Cafe Saturday which brought out more than 20 volunteers with varying levels and areas of expertise. 

Coates said they would like to have the events at least once per year, depending on budget and community response. 



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