432
A Growing Number of ‘Repair Cafes’ Are Popping Up Around the World to Curb Consumer Waste - Inside Climate News
(insideclimatenews.org)
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
432 points (99.5% liked)
Uplifting News
17034 readers
708 users here now
Welcome to /c/UpliftingNews (rules), a dedicated space where optimism and positivity converge to bring you the most heartening and inspiring stories from around the world. We strive to curate and share content that lights up your day, invigorates your spirit, and inspires you to spread positivity in your own way. This is a sanctuary for those seeking a break from the incessant negativity and rage (e.g. schadenfreude) often found in today's news cycle. From acts of everyday kindness to large-scale philanthropic efforts, from individual achievements to community triumphs, we bring you news—in text form or otherwise—that gives hope, fosters empathy, and strengthens the belief in humanity's capacity for good, from a quality outlet that does not publish bad copies of copies of copies.
Here in /c/UpliftingNews, we uphold the values of respect, empathy, and inclusivity, fostering a supportive and vibrant community. We encourage you to share your positive news, comment, engage in uplifting conversations, and find solace in the goodness that exists around us. We are more than a news-sharing platform; we are a community built on the power of positivity and the collective desire for a more hopeful world. Remember, your small acts of kindness can be someone else's big ray of hope. Be part of the positivity revolution; share, uplift, inspire!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Good.
I’ve worked in tech basically all my life. Everything from IT to shuffling wafer around a fab to now working for an aerospace parts supplier as an electrical tech.
The amount of waste is… it’s shocking. A board fails, and half of these companies throw it away. The other half sends it off to be ‘recycled’ as if that’s any better in the long run. Just because one chip is bad or whatever doesn’t mean the rest of the components on the board are bad.
That being said, I understand the massive amount of labor it would take to desolder every component on a board just to add them to stock. That’s why nobody does it. You’d need an army of people to properly remove and test every component on a failed board.
But, like, you don’t have to? All those components are already in a spot where they won’t get lost and can be retrieved when needed: on the failed board. Thankfully the company I work for now understands that buying things to be shipped takes a lot more time than just… taking an hour to steal a chip from a failed board and using that.
I worked for a company before that had at least half of the boards come off the wave solder machines with problems. Excess solder in places it shouldn’t be, failed components everywhere, and basic assembly issues. They’d toss these boards in a corner of the building to be repaired later. The issue is that they just couldn’t quit taking people away from rework and putting them on assembly. The engineers never bothered to come downstairs and actually do their jobs. So the failed boards never got worked on, and they kept generating a mountain of them.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m glad people are actually fixing stuff instead of throwing it away. Were that this would become the norm.
It’s really a good sign of the economic situation. If more people thought about waste before purchase and adopted a make do and mend attitude. That would help. But for a long time it’s been cheap to just replace and not care.