Restart Project

= " building a platform making it easy to get all the broken things you own repaired and reused, reducing waste and connecting repair enthusiasts".

URL = http://therestartproject.org/

Description

1.

"The Restart Project promotes positive behaviour change by encouraging and empowering people to use their electronics longer.

The time has come to move beyond the culture of incessant electronics upgrades and defeatism in the face of technical problems. We are facing slow-burn ecological and financial crises, and more immediately, we are witnessing the decline of our high streets.

We are preparing the ground for a future economy of maintenance and repair by reskilling, supporting repair entrepreneurs, and helping people of all walks of life to be more resilient. While recycling is important, we prefer intervening before disposal – encouraging consumers to buy for longevity and diverting electronics from “end of life”.

Our vision is one based on collaboration and creativity – combining online sharing with fun activities in real life, like community repair events, training and public speaking." (http://therestartproject.org/about/)

2.

"People no longer know how and where to repair what breaks in their lives – particularly electrical and electronics. They also don't know what shops or individuals might be able to give them maintenance advice. We are told it's cheaper to move on, upgrade, recycle the old and buy a new one. Even councils promote recycling, without doing much to promote repair and reuse. This results in a lot of waste, and high costs of environmentally sound disposal.

This becomes even harder at a time when recession is pushing further repair shops out of business. As a result, our communities are becoming less and less resilient, skills are not taken advantage of, and local business opportunities are wasted as well. This is evident in London: no matter how many skilled repairers the city has, most people are disconnected from them and accumulate broken things before throwing them away, instead than fixing and reusing.

What are we building?

JustRepair, a crowd-sourced map and directory of local repair options and support for those who need a quick, reliable and affordable fix. This platform will also motivate people to learn repair skills and to share their repair experiences, as a part of The Restart Project's greater mission to help people take back control of what they own.

Participants in the platform will:

1. profile repair businesses and individual repairers, sharing their experiences with them, listing the equipment & faults they can repair, rating their services;

2. list themselves as repair volunteers, freelancers and trainers, testing new repair models leading to waste reduction and reuse;

3. build a profile of themselves based on their reviews and including their own repair activities, i.e. sharing the repairs they do themselves or have done by others

4. share and/or find out about a number of other opportunities

- self-repair events/groups/ spaces, such as Repair Cafés, Restart Parties & Hackspaces;

- providers of second hand equipment and spare parts;

- reuse/upcycling opportunities, such as Freecycle events, Give & Take sheds at Recycle centres

- repair skill

- sharing and training opportunities;

The vision is creating a “ Trip Advisor” for repair which prevents waste, creates local business opportunities and supports skill-sharing and community resilience.

The platform starts with a focus on electronics and electricals in London, with the goal of scaling globally to incorporate all kinds of repairers in all sorts of urban communities.

What skills do we need?

We need coders with experience with crowdsourcing platforms, gamification, mapping integration, social connections, mobile app development, as well as UX people." (http://restartproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/restart-urbanprototyping3.pdf)