Category: Repair

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Illini Gadget Garage Closing Physical Location for Renovations, Hosting Pop-Up Clinics

This post originally appeared on the Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) Blog.

The Illini Gadget Garage, a collaborative repair center for student and staff owned electronic devices, will be closing its physical location (INHS Storage Building 3) for the summer on Monday, July 11, to allow for renovations associated with making the site compliant with ADA requirements. Renovations should be complete prior to the beginning of the Fall 2016 semester, and there will be a grand opening of the site at that time. Be sure to check the new Illini Gadget Garage web site, as well as its Twitter and Facebook accounts for details of the grand opening later in the summer.

We appreciate the ‘test pilots” who have come in this summer to work with us on their devices! To continue to serve the campus community during the renovation process, we will host pop-up clinics at various locations until the physical location is open for the public. Pop-up clinics will continue, even after the physical location is open, to make it more convenient for the campus community to practice sustainability through electronic product stewardship.

Two pop-up clinics are scheduled at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC; 1 Hazelwood Drive in Champaign), in the Stephen J. Warner Conference room:

  • Monday, July 11, from noon to 5 pm
  • Monday, July 18, from noon to 5 pm (Note: a Sustainable Electronics Campus Consortium meeting will occur in the conference room from 1:30-2:30 PM; feel free to come early or stay after the meeting to work on your devices!)

If you plan to come to either of these clinics, we suggest you fill out our online diagnostic form ahead of time. This will allow volunteers to do some preliminary research on the problem you’re facing, and make use of your one-on-one time more efficient.

If your department, residence hall, or student organization would like to host a pop-up repair clinic, please fill out the “Host a Pop-Up Clinic” form to express your interest. We’ll be in touch to work out the details.

Students, faculty, and staff with any degree of technical skill–including none whatsoever–are invited to sign up as Illini Gadget Garage volunteers. We want to empower everyone to feel comfortable with the idea of troubleshooting and repairing the electronics they own, to keep them in service longer and thus, out of the waste stream. Even if you’ve never fixed anything before, you can be part of our process of coming together to solve problems. We also could use help with marketing, social media, arranging pop-up clinics, developing educational programs, and other tasks, so if this project intrigues you, come be part of it! Stop by one of the pop-up clinics, or fill out our contact form and we’ll be in touch.

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REPAIR rather than REPLACE

Electronic waste is a growing national and global problem. The US Environmental Protection Agency reports that 40.4 % of electronics were recycled in the US in 2013. While the proportion of electronics recycled nationally has increased in recent years, due largely to landfill bans and related legislation in various states, it’s also true that our consumption of electronic devices is increasing over time. For example, PC World reported that 1 billion smartphones were shipped worldwide in 2013—enough for roughly 1 in every 7 humans on the planet.

That’s a staggering statistic for only one category among many electronic devices which saturate our lives. Beyond items like your phone or laptop, electronic components appear in a multitude of everyday items not typically considered “electronics,” from coffeemakers to greeting cards that play music. The manufacture and transport of electronics require great investments of natural and human resources in a variety of ways, and include economic, social, and environmental impacts throughout their product lifecycles. Meanwhile, society continues to foster the perception of electronics as items meant to be replaced frequently as newer models are released, or to be considered completely disposable (in the case of products like electronic greeting cards). The belief of many consumers that electronics are too complex or expensive for a layperson to repair often contributes to the short lifespan of electronics in practice, causing people to replace mildly damaged equipment rather than investing resources in maintenance.

We want to change those perceptions, and contribute to overall efforts to make our campus, community, and world a more sustainable place. We do this by assisting in troubleshooting and repair of electronic devices, encouraging consumers to consider, and take on, repair rather than replacement of devices. We work to keep devices in service for as long as possible, to educate consumers about the impacts of electronics, and provide information about recycling and reuse options. We also want to “demystify” technology and make its use and maintenance as inclusive as possible–you don’t have to be technically inclined to repair what you own, to make use of our space, or be part of our community.

Reduce, rethink, repair, reuse, recycle. Revolutionary!