In the last few months, there have been some exciting new projects at Remake! With new ventures popping up both in and outside of our Reuse Hub, we’re excited to be interacting with our community more often and working with a variety of different groups. This post is going to give an overview of these new projects and will give you an insider’s look on the exciting work we’ve been getting up to at Remake recently.
Summer 2022 saw the launch of our Commercial Brokerage Network, coordinated by Lolie Ware. Lolie’s work involves working with local businesses and community groups to ensure commercial items are saved from landfill and have an extended life throughout our community. Since starting the network, Lolie has worked with a range of organisations including the Crieff Hydro, The Tower and Strathearn Arts. Creating this network means that local groups and businesses now have a point of contact, where they can highlight any items they no longer need, to see if there is a good home for them within Strathearn and the surrounding areas. Ultimately, this means that fewer items are entering landfill and being left disused, instead they are being given a new lease on life.
Moving forward to November, the Remake Refillery opened its doors in our Reuse Hub, to enable members of our community to shop sustainably for everyday household items and food. Fiona McGarva has worked alongside local businesses who are providing the same service, to ensure Remake are complimenting their work. The stock at the Remake Refillery is wide ranging, from dried herbs, spices and grains to everyday household cleaning products, you can find it on our shelves! The purpose of the Refillery is to provide a way of reducing plastic use in everyday shopping for essentials. Customers just need to bring their own containers into the shop and can buy items by weight. Not only does this reduce plastic consumption, but it also reduces food waste. Only shopping for what you need means that ingredients are less likely to go to waste. In the future, we hope to be able to build an online map to help members of our local community find refill shops in the area and create a network of shops who can work together to provide a plastic free shopping experience. Fiona is also taking requests from customers on what items they would like to see stocked on our shelves, to ensure that we have everything you need for cooking and cleaning at home.
November also saw the launch of our monthly Repair Café! The Remake Repair Café runs on the second Saturday of every month at Strathearn Arts. Our Community Engagement Coordinator, Freya Geddes, has worked to widely promote the event throughout our community, to ensure that everyone knows where they can get their items repaired. Visitors to the Repair Café are invited to bring along their broken and damaged items for volunteers from Remake to repair. Currently, our volunteers can repair textiles, clothing, wooden items, and electricals. Our work with Cycle Crieff also means that we can repair bikes at these events. We are also delighted to have received funding from Electrical Safety First which has enabled us to provide training in PAT Testing and electrical repairs for our volunteers. This means that we can safely offer electrical repairs at our events. The purpose of the Repair Café is to provide an opportunity to have broken and damaged items repaired for a low cost (just a donation!), meaning that the item doesn’t need to be bought from new again or sent to landfill. Having items repaired is not only great for your pocket, it’s great for our planet! We recently ran our third Repair Café and since the project started, we have successfully prevented 666KG of CO2 emissions, which is the same amount of emissions was watching 1,156 hours of TV!
More recently, Freya has been working with Crieff High to set up a weekly Climate Group at the school. This groups runs on a Wednesday lunch time and invites students along to learn about and discuss current climate issues. At Remake, we think it’s really important to include young people in the climate conversation and have their voices heard. Youth engagement has been another area of focus for Freya and she’s excited to work with young people in our local community to see how best to support them in sustainable living.
Lastly, this January will also see the launch of Climate Café Crieff! This new project involves running events to invite members of the local community to join us in climate conversations. Our first Climate Café will feature a Climate Reality presentation from Jess Pepper. Jess is a local Climate Reality Leader and is also the coordinator for Climate Café Dunkeld and Birnam. Freya has been working with Jess to become a part of the Climate Café network, along with a variety of other groups across Scotland. Climate Cafés aim to provide “a safe, welcoming, informal space to talk about climate”. This event is open to everyone within our community, you don’t have to be a climate expert! In fact, the purpose of this month’s presentation is to bring everyone up to speed on the climate crisis and to see what is currently being done. This event will be the perfect opportunity to learn something new and to ask Jess any questions you may have about current climate issues. The event will also provide an opportunity to meet new people from across our local community in a friendly and welcoming environment, and of course there will be tea and coffee throughout!
Those are our most recent projects at Remake and we’re excited to see what 2023 holds for us! If you have any questions about any of these projects, don’t hesitate to get in touch and we will put you into contact with the project coordinator! We look forward to updating you again in the future on how these projects are progressing and any of the other work we’ve been doing!