Zero Waste Sooke will be continuing its successful Swap series in cooperation with the Sooke branch of Vancouver Island Regional Library.

Coming up on Sunday, August 20 from 11am to 1pm will be our School Supplies Swap! 

Bring your school supplies in good condition that you no longer need, to share. Take home at no cost school supplies that will be useful for you & your family. Students always need pens, pencils, crayons, felt pens, and more. Binders and writing paper are needed! Maybe you have scissors, rulers, and protractors to share, or a pencil bag, lunch kit or backpack. To drop off a box of supplies ahead of time, email  

FIXERS NEEDED

Are you good at mending broken items?  Do you have skills in repairing electronics, wood items, ceramics, clothing, appliances or bikes or in tool sharpening (or anything else)?  

Zero Waste Sooke is looking for volunteer “fixers” for its Repair Cafés, held 3 times a year, usually on a Sunday, in the dining room of the Community Hall from 10-2.  

Repair Cafés are a free event open to the community where folks can bring in broken items and work with a volunteer repair person to see if the items can be fixed instead of landfilled.  These are always fun events.  Coffee and goodies are available for the public and lunch will be provided for the fixers. Things that have been fixed in past ZWS Repair Cafés include: precious toys, lamps, appliances of all sorts, family heirlooms, bikes and clothing. If you are unsure of how you might fit in to the Repair Café you can always work alongside one of our regular fixers 

To explore becoming a fixer, contact Sooke repair café. You can learn more here about Repair Cafés.   
   

FIXING IS INTERNATIONAL

                                                                                    
A European Repair Café Conference was held online for three hours on July 9, 2023. It was a good collection of presentations in English that helped me put my ideas about our own Repair Cafés in better order in my head. You can watch the recording here 

Though the international effect of these local meetings for people fixing things has spread to every continent, it is still happening in Europe most of all, with over 2,000 Repair Cafés in many European countries and several hundred scattered around the world. Most of these local events are highly practical. Few have political activities associated with them, and those who do focus mostly on supporting ‘Right To Repair’ legislation.  

Two good quotes that stood out are:

• “We want to stop the throw-away society, and for that we need skill and rules to support repair.”
• “To encourage young people to attend, cultivate relationships with other agencies that are youth-centred and encourage families to come.”

What I took from it most of all was the resolution to find out if our events would be served well by getting insurance, and to ask for a copy of a repair café carbon calculator which one presenter has made available for anyone to put on their group’s websites.

Jo Phillips, Paula Johanson, Wendy O’Connor

Transition Sooke Strategic Planning Event, Jan 22, 2023, download here

by Paula Johanson

On Sunday, Sept 18 from 10 am to 2 pm, Zero Waste Sooke and the Sooke Library held a Craft & Art Supplies Swap. We had done one Swap before the pandemic began, and were delighted to see how well this Swap went. The Library’s April Ripley made a good image for small posters and for sharing on social media.

Six tables were filled with sorted crafting materials and art supplies, emptied, and filled again, emptied and filled once more. I lost count of attendees at over fifty people. So many bags of yarn, or fabric, or art supplies went to new homes. The library workers were glad to see many people who said this was their first visit to our new library building.

This event was particularly popular with small daycare homes, and those mothers were delighted at how much they could take. Some families came back for a second turn through the room, and one person came back twice! At the end, three friends came to help pack up the leftovers, and another volunteered her vehicle to take leftovers to a sharing store. Thank you all for participating!

At the Library’s request, Zero Waste Sooke will be co-sponsoring three two-hour-long Swaps in the new year instead of one four-hour event: a Yarn Swap one month, a Sewing Supplies Swap the next month, and an Art Supplies Swap the month after that. 

When candidates arrived at the October 2 all-candidates’ meeting sponsored by Transition Sooke at the Sooke Community Hall, they weren’t lined up on stage waiting for questions from the audience. All the questions will be delivered at small tables with only one candidate present.

Each candidate sat at a table and several participants joined them and asked questions. After about 5-10 minutes, a gong sounded and participants moved to a new table.

“We like to call it speed-rating,” says Transition Sooke’s Bernie Klassen. “Participants get to move around the room and for a short time they get to ask their questions face-to-face with each one of the candidates.”

“Transition Sooke members were eager to ask questions about the climate emergency and how Sooke should respond to it,” says Klassen, “but participants asked questions about any subject area that interested them.”

There are 23 would-be council members running this year, and most of them came to the event.

         by Paula Johanson

Zero Waste Sooke hosted a Repair Café on October 16 that went really well in our new location at Sooke Library! This appears to have been the LAMP Repair Café, as everybody helped with lamps.

Many thanks to Carol and Dave who greeted arrivals, set up coffee and homemade snacks, and kept contact info for anyone wanting to be part of future activities. Nineteen repairs were made, advice was offered on how to make a zipper work for a while longer, and many conversations took place.

A new arrival to Sooke introduced himself as Rick. All his tools are boxed up in his new garage, so he just came to say hi — but before long he was helping me with a blinky bike light. Of course he had a Swiss Army pocket knife with tweezers. Suddenly, Rick became one of our fixers! He made several repairs, borrowing tools from Jeremy while chatting knowledgeably about the Right to Repair movement.

We had a welcome visit from Susan McDonald who runs Repair Cafés in North Saanich, and another person visiting from California who had checked the Sooke Library’s website and brought her clock from home to take it to our Repair Café. These visitors came because they were planning TWO activities for their trips and had found word of our Repair Café on the Library’s website; others came for the first time after seeing the terrific poster made by Library worker April Ripley.

Bernie worked on at least two electric kettles, and some lamps. The final repair he made was to a toaster that had to have its lever held down for it to toast bread. The owner waited her turn, polishing the toaster and then explained to Bernie how the lever just wouldn’t stay down on its own.

“Bad toaster!” said Bernie, and he smacked it. “Bad toaster!”

And then the toaster worked properly.

The toaster owner was mystified and delighted.

“If it gives you any more trouble, just bring it around again,” said Bernie.

Meanwhile, our final repair was taking place: it was a vacuum cleaner. Before the vacuum reached Jeremy, I’d already quizzed the owner and agreed the problem wasn’t any of the things she or I knew how to fix; it was a switch. This took half an hour to successfully fix!

All in all, a wonderful success, with new people planning to come to the Zero Waste Sooke meeting on Thursday Nov 17 at 7pm at the Library.