Kurriss Wilson, who recently opened the bike shop Retro reCycle in Willow Point, has always been “a fixer.”
“The way I see it, you should buy something one time,” he says, polishing his bike in a side room at the Sportsplex on Saturday, the murmur of the Home Show clearly audible from the gym across the hall.
Or not buy it at all, he says, and just make it out of parts from other things, as he’s done to create the bike he’s polishing.
“I’ve had this one for 37 years,” he smiles. “Sure, there have been tweaks and upgrades, but even that front tire is 17 years old.”
And it’s not just a pleasure cruiser that he uses when it’s nice out. It’s his primary mode of transportation.
“I probably put 40 km a day on it.”
Wilson was at the Sportsplex to be a part of Campbell River’s first Repair Café, organized by the City of Campbell River and Comox Strathcona Waste Management (CMWM).
Repair Café is a worldwide initiative begun in Amsterdam in 2009 to encourage people to repair broken things instead of getting new ones and learn some practical skills at the same time. In the six years since the movement began, over 750 cafés have taken place around the world.
“We are trying to empower people to be less wasteful,” says Gayle Bates, waste reduction educator for CSWM.
Wilson, for one, is fully on board.
“When you look at there being something like 130,000 bikes put in landfills in North America each year,” he says, “it’s just baffling. I mean, what a waste, right?”
Meanwhile, at a booth across the room, Don Barley looks over a seemingly new Kitchenaid food processor, it’s bottom panel taken off, wires hanging out.
“Someone brought this in because he bought it brand new, and when he got it home, it didn’t work,” Barley says. “When he called the company, they sent him a new one for free and told him to just throw this one out.”
So he and fellow “fixer” Eric Stapleton cracked it open to see what could be causing the issue.
It wasn’t a mechanical problem – Barley’s expertise – so Stapleton took it over to his booth to have a look at the electrical panel.
“Let’s see what we can do here,” he says, pulling out his toolbox.
Elsewhere in the room, there are women sitting with sewing machines waiting for anyone with hemming needs, someone who knows about smartphones willing to help those with questions, and someone else taking apart a guitar amplifier brought in by a musician.
For physicist Dr. David Barr, it’s a wonderful coming together of expertise and enthusiasm.
He was there working on electronic devices because he’s concerned about their components – often containing toxic materials – ending up in the waste stream and negatively affecting our natural environment.
No word yet if the city has plans to repeat the event, but based on the enthusiasm of those involved, it seems the idea itself is one likely to be recycled, as well.
