Reduce, reuse REPAIR
It all started when her toaster broke. And her desk lamp. And her vacuum cleaner. Sandra Goldmark, a theatre set designer and university professor in New York, was on maternity leave in 2013 and found the stuff around her was falling apart. But she couldn’t get any of it fixed.
In her new book, Fixation: How to Have Stuff Without Breaking the Planet, she recalls: “Amazon beckoned. But I didn’t want to get a new vacuum – I wanted the old one to work.” It’s a frustration we all know well: a 2016 study by Nottingham Trent University found that 45 percent of people cannot name a repair service that they trust.
As Sandra says: “I thought about how the vacuum and desk lamp and backpack and toaster are part of a much bigger economic system of large-scale extraction of resources, poor design, rapid manufacture, global distribution, early obsolescence and disposal.
“I thought about what it means to raise kids in a culture where we place almost no value on longevity, maintenance, durability. Where many of the things we use are disposable and toxic to the planet and the people who make them. Where many
