NEW PALTZ, N.Y. (AP) — On a drizzly Saturday morning late last month, the basement of the New Paltz United Methodist Church filled with old lamps, blunt knives, malfunctioning sound mixers and balky zippers.
About a dozen volunteers welcomed the broken goods and their owners to a worldwide movement that’s evangelizing new relationships between people and their things.
Repair Cafes — free events where volunteers with technical know-how help neighbors fix myriad household items — are part of a new brand of anticonsumerism that’s trying to offer an alternative to the mass-produced disposable goods that have dominated the global economy for the last half-century. Helping fuel that move to repairing, not buying, are U.S. consumer prices, which climbed sharply again last month as the war with Iran delivered higher gasoline prices and more pain for Americans.