Tag: Re-use
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Any Electrical or Electronic Items that need fixing….
Electrical or electronic items that need fixing?Broken something and don’t want to throw it away?
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The Restart Project, encourage and empower people to use their electrical and electronics longer! They are back in Tooting this weekend so do come along!
Saturday 26th September – 2.30 – 5.30pm
Mushkil Aasaan, 220 – 222 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW (next to Nandos)
Do note that Restart Parties are a community self-repair space where you take responsibility for your own gadgets and data, so please do not forget to take any back-ups beforehand, if relevant – and if possible arrive during the first two hours to allow time for fixing!
Read more about one of our previous parties here.We hope to make Restart Parties a regular feature in Tooting and are on the lookout for skilled local fixers. If you are interested come along and say hello – or email Hilary Jennings on transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
More info at Restart Project (http://therestartproject.org/) including details of regular skillshares.
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Restart Party Report
Last Saturday, TTT hosted another Restart Party with the Restart Project at Mushkil Aasaan in Tooting. As usual the brilliant volunteer repairers did their utmost to help prevent an assortment of electrical goods from laptops to kettles to cameras from going to landfill.
It can be scary to see your beloved item taken apart (see the DAB radio and laptop above!). However these things go wrong so readily these days due to built in obsolescence, that learning how to provide a simple fix can make you feel good and save you money, while doing your bit to lessen human impact on the planet.
The Fixing List The Restart Project is a London-based social enterprise that encourages and empowers people to use their electronics longer, by sharing repair and maintenance skills. Thanks again to Ugo, Janet and all the fixers.
It would be great to set up a local group so if you are interested in becoming a local repairer in Tooting, contact us via transitiontowntooting@gmail.com. The next Restart Parties in Tooting are on Saturday July 11th and Saturday September 26th. Put the dates in your diary and keep any broken electronics out of the bin till then! -
Broken electrical and electronic items? Restart are back in Tooting!
Do you have an electrical or electronic item that needs fixing?Something broken you don’t want to throw away?Challenge the culture of built-in obsolescence and take back control
of your electronic stuff….The Restart Project, a London-based social enterprise that encourages and empowers people to use their electrical and electronics longer, are running regular “Restart Parties” in Tooting. Sounds interesting? Then come along to one of the events below:
Restart Parties
at Mushkil Aasaan, 220 – 222 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW (next to Nandos) 2.30-5.30:Do note that Restart Parties are a community self-repair space where you take responsibility for your own gadgets and data, so please do not forget to take any back-ups beforehand, if relevant – and if possible arrive during the first two hours to allow time for fixing!
Read a great blog about one of our previous parties here.
We hope to make Restart Parties a regular feature in Tooting and are on the lookout for skilled local fixers. If you are interested come along and say hello – or email Hilary Jennings on transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
More info at Restart Project (http://therestartproject.org/) including details of regular skillshares.
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The Anti-Upgrading Exhibition – at the Lightbox
‘Our enormously productive economy demands we make consumption a way of life’.
This is a quote from 1955 on the wall of an exhibition now showing at the Lightbox Gallery in Woking.
A toilet brush is the unlikely centre-piece of the exhibition. Its description reads ‘This is a well designed toilet brush from Addis bought in the late ‘80’s when our house was built, and still as good as new! It still performs perfectly…. it has probably been used over 30,000 times…. (This brush has been very thoroughly cleaned!)The exhibition ‘Waste Not…’ runs (free) until 8thApril at the gallery (30 mins on the train from Clapham Junction or Wimbledon). It is an exhibition of old appliances and other objects that are still used – or at least have been kept in the hope of being used!
It shows the objects themselves and short films of their owners talking about them. It’s all about maintaining things – it is the anti-upgrading exhibition!
On 28th March, the South London Makerspace and Restart Project held a fixing and mending workshop at the gallery where they showed members of the local community how to fix their electrical and electronic items, sharpen old saws and tools and mend self-assembly furniture with new parts printed on a 3-D printer!If you are interested in getting involved locally with mending, fixing or making – or just have something you’d like to fix – come along to our Tooting Restart Project workshops at Mushkil Aasaan, 220 – 222 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW (next to Nandos)Sat 25th April – 2.30 – 5.30Sat 11th July – 2.30 – 5.30Sat 26th September – 2.30 – 5.30 -
Make Something, Meet People
This month’s Meet & Make is a sew fest! We have makes suitable for sewbies and sewsperts.
All materials, expertise and equipment is provided for free (we do collect small, donations for the venue) so you can just turn up, have a chat, sew some seams and perhaps go home with some new hairbands, or a pair of slippers.
Date: 11th March 2015Time: 6:30 – 8:30 (do join in later if you are working late or whatever)Sprout Community Arts 76 Moyser RoadFor more info please contact Jeni: jeniannewalker@gmail.com 07944693015 -
Bottle Greenhouse action Sunday March 8th, 1100-1300 at Tooting Community Garden
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When you were at school, was your
classroom outside in the sun?We’re building a plastic bottle greenhouse at the Tooting Community Garden, along with Year Six from Gatton School.
That means the children are preparing bottles that would otherwise be added to local waste or recycling. They are measuring the site and problem solving for the construction, all during the weekly outdoor learning sessions.
The whole school community has been collecting 2 litre clear plastic pop or water bottles (that’s the kind we need) since the autumn…every week, the children come loaded with bags of bottles. We’ll use well over 1000. (Anyone welcome to bring bottles to the garden on any Sunday).
This weekend, in the normal Sunday Garden session from 1100-1300, all welcome to help us catch up a bit with the repetitive but deeply satisfying task of cutting, washing and piling up (hundreds of) our plastic bottles. Yes it is addictive.
We’ll have the kit – and if you have a favourite pair of sharp scissors, do bring them along.
Not all the jobs involve cutting – there’s something for everyone of all ages.Please come along!
The garden is at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN. We’ll post any last minute info on both the TTT and the Tooting Community Garden facebook pages. Not to tempt fate…..the weather forecast is good.
Bottle greenhouse made by another school -
‘I never knew you could do so much with paper’
The title for this first TTT blog post of New Year 2015 is a parent’s comment at our ‘Reduce, Re-use, RESPARKLE!’ crafts making session run with the Tooting Library on the Saturday before Christmas.
‘I never knew you could do so much with paper’ is a great prompt for us all about seeing things differently, about challenge, about taking action, about sustainability, about exploring new skills together across ages and cultures, about appreciating the local settings we have in Tooting (including great community places like the Library), about coming together to have some surprises and fun.
Those are all ‘resolutions’ that TTT will aspire to in 2015.
What did we do in the ‘RESPARKLE!’ session?
We used recycled materials and simple methods to enthuse children and adults with making beautiful seasonal decorations, presents or bags from ‘waste’ – old newspapers from the Library, single-side printed A4 docs, juice cartons, and more.It was a very full two hours – from a standing start at 2:00 pm, we were almost swamped by lots of nimble fingers, questions, concentration and focus, and smiles…and a big range of ages, nationalities and cultures.
We had over 30 children active at once; we had adults making things too, and families setting up tables and doing their own thing (all these activities can be done at home with household materials).
We expected a fun session, and this was nearly off the scale….!
Thanks so much to the GLL staff at Tooting Library, and to our six skilful TTT volunteers.
Cheers to the Children’s Librarian for these nice comments: ‘the event went brilliantly, was well organised, well attended and great fun. I was really pleased to have you along for the day’.
All welcome at our diverse TTT events – follow this blog, or stay in touch on twitter or on Facebook.
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Number 2 in TTT’s ’12 tweets to Christmas’
Here is tweet number two:No.2 in @tttooting‘s 12 days to xmas: re-make, re-use & re-create to reclaim waste in new ways rebuildingcenter.org pic.twitter.com/uNsj5LroEg -
Insect Hotel – trash to treasure (of sorts…)
Have you ever thought about how much material gets used once and thrown away? Or is not financially worth re-using? Or how most people won’t be satisfied buying something second hand, it has to be new?
Somewhat in tune with Transition Network’s December theme of “Less is More” I thought it would be of interest to look at the materials we are using in the Insect Hotel build.
The structure is supported on waste flag stones donated to the garden. The four uprights used to be fence that ran across the garden and was blown down in the gales a year or two ago, the horizontal shelf supports too. Those bracing pieces are temporary…
Week 5 – all we need now is the habitats… and the bugs! Click below to read how the roof was put together…
This week, the students from Gatton raised the roof, along with David, Sharon, Esther and I. The roof is made of amazing 4b2 timber – this particular stuff came out of our loft when we were lucky enough to convert it a year ago. The booming domestic renovation business is not set up at all to re-use or recycle. Time and money rule, and its cheaper to dump these timbers in a skip than de-nail and re-use – criminal if you ask me, imagine a waterfall system of being passed onto smaller and smaller projects, but that’s another idea for another blog. The tiles too came from our job.
Detail showing roof structure and re-use timber and tile If you need any of these materials, just go for a bike ride and find a house wrapped in scaffolding and ask the builders. Chances are, they’d be more than happy to offload it too you (you might need a bigger vehicle than a bike to transport it!) as it reduces their waste costs and so increases their profit as this is already figured into a fixed price to the client.
The only thing new so far on the build is the tile batons – I couldn’t find any re-use ones, unfortunately. However, when I went to buy them, I found out my local timber merchant has stacks and stacks of pallets, considered an inconvenient waste and were kind enough to drop 5 of them round to the garden – that’s the rest of the shelving material sorted! The simplest Insect Hotels are made from skips, so if you’re looking to do one… check out here for pallet-based inspiration.
And here for a previous blogpost on innovation in building waste re-use.