zerowaste

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Discussing ways to reduce waste and build community!

Celebrate thrift as a virtue, talk about creative ways to make do, or show off how you reused something!

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JacobCoffinWrites

Getting kicked out of junkyards (right to repair needs to evolve) (self.zerowaste)

submitted 1 year ago by activistPnk to c/zerowaste

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I’ve been kicked out of local junkyards ½ dozen times or so now. It’s a tricky game of trying to reach the waste pile when no one is looking, and also seeing who is on duty in hopes of at least ensuring that the same person doesn’t experience the pattern of kicking you out multiple times. Perhaps they would get aggressive and even block you from dumping stuff if you’re kicked out too much.

Strictly speaking, it’s theft to take stuff from the junkyard. To be clear, the junkyards in my area do not sell parts. They just melt and refine the waste. The melt value is naturally less than the as-is value to someone who would repair or reuse.

IMO, the #rightToRepair movement needs to expand to give the public access to junk before it’s recycled or dumped into landfills.

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[–] JacobCoffinWrites 4 points 1 year ago

I think my ideal world would have some kind of cataloguing stage where items are posted to solarpunk eBay. Perhaps they're dropped off at local collection points and landfill swap shops, workers sort them and identify their condition (or maybe people provide some of that info when they drop their stuff off?). Perhaps some stuff that can't be used locally is transported to regional distribution centers. People are able to search that catalog, place orders, and maybe have stuff shipped to those collection centers for pickup. Maybe combine the distribution centers with in-house workshops, or maybe private repair co-ops there'd could take in broken stuff as stock. Hopefully a strong culture of offering stuff up Buy Nothing -style would take some of the strain off that industry, but I could see almost any stage of that being pretty fulfilling work honestly