By Will Irvine (He/Him)
Peeking out from an alleyway behind the beloved Chow and Library bars is a curious new addition to Wellington’s growing sustainable community. Te Aro Zero Waste is not your average tip shop. The shelves are stocked with $90 refurbished laptops. All the available items are clean and working, and colourful rolls of cheap, high-quality fabric line the back shelves. Sunlight pours in through the large glass windows, and the space is filled with a warm, welcoming energy.
When I sat down with Polly Griffiths and Kim Tabrum, who work for the centre and its parent organisation, the Wellington Sustainability Trust, they’re quick to jump into the many functions of the centre. We’re sitting next to a bench of sewing machines, which Kim explains is part of the Trust’s ongoing RepairEd program. “We realised early on that repair is very aligned with our goals,” she said, pointing to their partnership with the Repair Café movement. The ethos of repair has arisen in the last decade or so, and is a direct reaction to the prevailing culture of planned obsolescence, fast fashion, and wasteful single-use goods.
RepairEd, however, doesn’t just work with clothes. On the other side of the sewing bench sit two electronic repair stations. Polly tells me that these, like the sewing machines, are open for the public to come and use, with the assistance of skilled volunteers. In fact, electronic repair takes pride of place in Te Aro Zero Waste. The laptops I spotted earlier are all donations from members of the public, and are tested and fixed at minimal cost in order to sell them off to people in need—including students. According to Polly and Kim, the response has been overwhelming: “We didn’t expect to see so many students and teenagers coming in!”. Demand for the affordable devices has been so high that Zero Waste is now seeking new donations in order to continue offering them.
The new centre supplements the already-existing tip shop, which sits in the hills behind Happy Valley. “For people who use public transport, the [original] tip shop is pretty inaccessible,” says Kim. By contrast, sitting just off Tory Street, the Zero Waste centre is situated right in the middle of the city. They even have bimonthly tip shop dates, where people can bring waste that might be harder to dispose of in the smaller city facility.
Te Aro Zero Waste is open from 10-4 from Wednesday to Saturday. Find them on Instagram @tearozerowaste or online at sustaintrust.org.nz.