The Athens-Clarke County Recycling Division is bringing a part of America Recycles Week to the Athens area, hosting a series of events throughout the county Nov. 12-17.
The week started off with a Fix-It Clinic on Nov. 12 at the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials, which invited people to bring broken toys, clothes, furniture and other items to be repaired for free in an effort to promote reusing items rather than throwing them away.
Suki Janssen, Solid Waste Department Director, said more than 20 people came to the fix-it clinic with a variety of items
“They had some folks bring in clothing to mend zippers, and then we had lots of lights. This year seemed to be the year of lamps needing to be fixed,” Janssen said. “We had some computers, several bikes, a local seamstress, we were able to fix most everything.”
However, Janssen said the most difficult items to fix are the newer, more plastic based items.
“Some of those items aren’t made to be fixed, they’re kind of made with planned obsolescence,” Janssen said. “We’re starting to see those more, and we just don’t have much success.”
The Fix-It Clinic is able to help people reuse items before discarding or recycling them. Janssen said they started the clinic to fill a need in the community for reuse events.
“We do so much around recycling, but the EPA hierarchy for waste reduction is reduce, reuse, recycle,” Janssen said. “Sometimes it’s hard for us to grab onto good events to help with the reduce and reuse.”
