DIY home appliance repair: Taichung repair cafe's free classes win praise

When items at home break, people often have nowhere to turn for repairs and simply throw them away. In response, the Taichung City Environmental Protection Bureau set up a repair cafe in 104 (ROC year), using one-on-one teaching and providing simple tools, inviting the public to bring their broken items along and repair them themselves with volunteers' help, promoting resource recycling and reuse. The repair cafe has so far held 650 sessions with nearly 2,000 participants and has been widely praised. The Environmental Protection Bureau said it will continue to offer courses and welcomes the public to make good use of them.

Bai Zhirong, director of the Taichung City Environmental Protection Bureau, said the repair cafe provides a friendly environment, and the Taichung City Resource Recycling Environmental Volunteer Team helped set up a repair platform, with repair teaching divided into 4 time slots each day. So far, 650 sessions have been held with nearly 2,000 participants. The content covers 6 courses, including wooden products, bicycle repair, home appliance repair, reuse of old clothes and flag cloth, eco-friendly enzymes and eco-friendly soap, offering simple repair instruction and on-site tool borrowing.

A member of the public surnamed Liao who signed up for a course pointed out that starting this year, buying drinks no longer comes with free plastic bags, and using an eco-friendly bag for just one drink is inconvenient. Through a friend's introduction, Liao happened to join the Environmental Protection Bureau's flag cloth reuse repair course. Under the teacher's careful guidance, Liao successfully made a first eco-friendly drink cup sleeve, which was a joy. Besides reusing waste materials, Liao also learned sewing machine and tailoring skills.

The Environmental Protection Bureau pointed out that in addition to the repair platform, the "repair cafe" also tours each district to hold resource repair lectures, and so far 43 sessions have been held, attracting nearly a thousand students and winning wide praise. The "repair cafe" currently has two locations, at the Baozhilin Environmental Education Park and the Fengyuan District Resource Recycling Site. For information on resource recycling and the "repair cafe", visit the Environmental Protection Bureau's resource recycling website ( http://recycle.epb.taichung.gov.tw/news/news_01_1.asp?id=2930 ), the repair platform registration website ( https://goo.gl/Gxet7o ), or call the Environmental Protection Bureau's resource recycling hotline at 04-22294025.