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They got 5,650 items at their workshops, and 3,120 of them could be fixed. Of those, 1,464 were brought back to life, while 1,066 were too far gone to be fixed. All of this has led to 11,271 hours of volunteer effort. The Restart Project is a social initiative, or as they call it, a social business. Its goal is to fight planned obsolescence and protect the environment by not letting us throw away malfunctioning digital products. Here are some of the project's numbers: Janet Gunter, one of the co-founders of the Restart Project, is on the London team, which is where the main office sits.
She worked with a friend named Ugo Vallauri on third-world collaboration projects in 2012. Vallauri would eventually become her co-founder. He tells Teknautas that the waste problems are exactly here, where individuals can afford to change their equipment every time. They got the idea for the Restart Project after seeing that people on other continents used their electronics more and had a culture of reusing things. Since then, the goal has been to bring together people who want to fix their own things with people who want to share their DIY abilities.
A phone may have an easy screen replacement
The point is not to fix their equipment for them, but to show them how to do it and do it together. You can't just drop off your device and pick it up later; it's not a free repair shop. Gunter comes to the conclusion that you have to be interested and want to learn something. They also get money from donations: "We don't want money to keep people from going to learning activities. The money that is gathered is used to buy any materials that are needed, although the owners of the equipment usually carry extra parts in case they are needed. It has also received small public funds to pay for specific projects, like organizing more events, but these have only happened when they were needed.
Gunter notes with joy that many of them want to share their repair abilities. The technical volunteers, often called "restarter volunteers," are people from all walks of life, including engineers and DIYers who want to give their skills or tips. People desire to give mobile phones, small appliances, laptops, and their attachments or peripherals a new life. They are each their own world: "It's easy to replace the screen on a phone, but almost impossible to replace the battery."
Telephones and toasters in Barcelona
People who use the service also have to deal with software updates that make handsets safer, especially Android phones. People need help since they don't know how to make a factory reset or can't remember how to do it. Those products are the hardest to fix, but toys, headphones, and lamps are more likely to be restored and given a new life. They are experts at fixing electrical and technological devices, but they also market other forms of services, like fixing bikes. Most cities in the UK, as well as those in other European countries like Barcelona, have the Restart Project. Andrea Bastida is an environmentalist who helps manage e-waste and is one of the people who started Restarters Barcelona.
When she worked in Spain as part of a recycling effort in Ghana, she heard about the project. Her last thesis was about getting materials off of mobile phones. His coordinator told him about the proposal. Bastida tells Teknautas that she had heard that a lot of people in Barcelona wanted to see something like this happen. He introduced them, and they've been working together since July 2015, which is more than two years. The Barcelona group is made up of volunteers who fix things and coordinators. Their pool has twelve restarters. Most repair people do it for fun; they only fix things when they have spare time, are good at it, and enjoy it.
Mobile phones that last and last
There are also real repair technicians, like workshop technicians. There are engineers, designers, and environmental scientists among the people who are in charge. It's not always true that the Restart Project has offices in Barcelona. We select different places in Barcelona to hold the classes because the goal is not to run a repair shop but to teach people again. Showing folks how to fix their computer, hair dryer, or anything else by opening it up and trying things out. It is not a black box full of ink that will explode when you open it, which can be scary at times. They are able to do it.
People sign up using an online form and tell the repairers what kind of gadget they are bringing in so that the repairers may decide if they will be able to help them during that session. To put it another way, the person who is fixing the gadget is the citizen who comes in and is told what to do by the repairman. They have also hosted workshops in places other than the Catalan capital, such Sabadell. You have to pay for travel, printed materials, and other costs yourself. We just put out a donation jar at the sessions to help pay for the repairers' parking.
Raising Awareness About Repair Culture
Their records reveal that as of March 2017, they had held 12 restart parties and 108 gadgets were delivered to them. There were 47 that could be fixed, 22 that didn't have a replacement part, and 30 that couldn't be fixed at all. They didn't even have time to find out if they might have been reused in two circumstances. Bastida has seen that the people who come to his seminars are highly aware. They know a lot about this area, what can be fixed, and how essential it is to protect the environment, so they don't need to change their thoughts very much. The problem is getting to the folks who don't know anything about this world because they don't have enough information.
This target audience is still there, but they don't get the new way of thinking or the shift in perspective. In the interim, schools and businesses are asking them to run workshops. The Restart Project is another effort that tries to show how much carbon is released when making electronic equipment. Their research shows that the World Bank thinks that 1.9 billion mobile phones were sold in 2015, which is nearly 60 phones every second. They also say that making those phones had the same carbon footprint as all of Austria (7,778 kg per person in 2011).
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