Everybody’s Got Broken Stuff. Repair, Not Replace

In this episode, Peter Mui challenges the unsustainable practice of accepting non-repairable items, “junk by design,”  from appliances to smart phones that quickly end up in landfills. Do we accept purchase without ownership? What is our relationship to consumption?

Peter Mui, MIT graduate IS  founder and organizer of the Fixit Clinic -a “pop-up” community repair workshop where people bring their broken things to disassemble and hopefully repair with the assistance of a volunteer Fixit Coach.  Fixit Clinics are all over the US, and there are Zoom Fixit Clinics plus the Global Fixers Discord Server open 24/7!

QUOTES:

PETER: “So...the initial quality seems great to the customer, but ...within a year or a year and a half... basically, the thing is junk. So I'm calling that” junk by design.”

PETER: “...There was a time when you used to be able to get repairs for common household appliances...and they just disappeared.... I just couldn't stand the waste, I couldn't stand the idea of the product churn and the idea that this stuff was going to a landfill and it was basically sound.”

PETER: “Imagine a future where everything that we...consume;  it's designed, built, serviced, and maintained in a local service area using locally available tools, materials, processes and services.”

LINKS:

Fixit Clinic

Joining Zoom Fixit Clinics or the Global Fixers Discord Server

Celebrating Repair at Fixit Clinic  

Fixing the World With Peter Mui of Fixit Clinic

RE:WIRED GREEN 2022: Peter Mui on the Right-to-Repair Movement

Learn  About Right To Repair 

Fixit Clinics pair critical thinking and hands-on engineering- Peter Mui ’82, MIT Technology Review, by Alice Waugh, June 27, 2018