Repair and reuse watchwords for UB Sustainability event

Repair and reuse was the theme of the day as members of the UB community brought their broken household items to the Student Union to get fixed at the recent Repair and Reuse Fair.

The event was sponsored by UB Sustainability in a partnership with the Post Landfill Action Network (PLAN), an organization that works with colleges and universities to raise awareness of and find solutions for the waste crisis.  

The UB fair was a stop on PLAN’s 2018 Points of Intervention Tour, a national campaign to promote people, companies and movements that are challenging the linear consumption economy that we live in today.

“What we’d like to stress is for the consumption model to not be linear, but circular,” said Erin Moscati, sustainability education manager for UB Sustainability. “When we’re done consuming these things, they always remain somewhere.”

Throughout the day, people stopped by with items that were no longer functioning and the “fixers” from the Dare to Repair Cafe — a group of volunteers for the University Heights Tool Library — went to work. Items such vacuum cleaners and clock radios came in as junk and left in working condition — avoiding a trip to a landfill.

While repairing items, fixers also served as educators, showing owners what was wrong with their items and how they could make future repairs themselves.

When an item was fixed, a bell at the welcome table rang in triumph as another appliance was diverted from a landfill. In just a short amount of time the event was already making a difference environmentally.

The Repair and Reuse Fair wasn’t just aimed at fixing broken items. It also provided an opportunity to connect the university community with sustainability efforts that are going on elsewhere. Several companies and organizations, including Preservation Buffalo Niagara, LUSH Cosmetics, Goodwill of Western New York, Guayaki and the UB Environmental Network, were represented at the event.

“The Buffalo community doesn’t always connect with UB and (vice versa),” said Stephanie Acquario, assistant director of environmental affairs for the UB Student Association. “Bringing those groups together is a big deal. There are students who’ve never been to downtown Buffalo because UB is so Amherst-centered. It’s awesome for people to see all of the sustainability and revitalization stuff going on in the community,” she said.

Christiana Limniatis, director of preservation services at Preservation Buffalo Niagara, said showing people how to repair and reuse items will go a long way.

“I think there’s difficulty in seeing that vision of reusing things and to think you could spend no money at all to fix something and save a couple of bucks,” said Limniatis. “We should be looking to reuse and recycle before throwing everything away into a landfill.”

Just outside the Student Union, UB’s Car Club also was getting into the repair-and-reuse spirit by demonstrating common fixes that anybody can do to keep their car on the road.

“Everyone should know how to jump a car (battery), change a tire, or check their oil,” said club president Andrew Levitt. “One quick lesson from somebody could potentially be a lifesaver.”

At the end of the day, many people left the event either with a working household item or with newfound knowledge, thanks to the many organizations that were present.

Even more impressively, there were real results from the fair, as 140 pounds of potential waste were diverted from landfills, fair organizers said.