– June 11, 2021

Greetings reuse fans,

It is estimated that there are about 2100 repair cafes around the world with about 100 in the US. These are largely volunteer efforts where people with repair skills volunteer to help others fix everyday items. CJ would like to explore creating a repair café opportunity and we need your help! 

Whether you have an existing repair business or are just a handy individual that likes to fix stuff, we would like to know about you. In order to develop a reliable resource for repair/refurbishing programing, we would like to build a list of potential instructors with particular skills in repair or refurbishment that are in our community. Or perhaps you are a person who would like to learn how to fix something—what would you like to be able to repair? 

You can also contact our general manager, Melissa Mongelli, directly and let us know:

• What you would be interested in learning to repair

and/or:

• Your repair skill(s)
• Would you be willing to share that with others
• How we can reach you or if you have an existing repair business (let us know the details).

I was honored to participate in the Covestro sponsored forum on the Circular Economy. I was part of a panel discussing what is happening locally in Pittsburgh to advance the circular economy. To review there are 3 goals to a circular economy: 1) design out waste and pollution; 2) keep products in use for as long as possible; 3) regenerate natural systems damaged by our consumption based economy. CJ’s mission fits perfectly into goal #2, but there is an area of keeping things in use that we have not put a lot of energy into and that is repair and refurbishment. One of the ways repair and refurbishment are being addressed around the globe are through repair cafés. 

CJ began to develop some internal skill building in refurbishment, when we sent two of our employees to Protohaven to take a course in powder coating. We will be looking for opportunities to clean up lower value materials to show our customer base how to bring older metal items back to life! The public can sign up for a variety of Protohaven classes and access the organization’s extensive wood and metal shop infrastructure including digital fabrication and commercial sewing machines. And it only a stone’s throw from CJ!

Thanks for supporting reuse (and repair),

Mike Gable

Executive Director

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