A club known as We Are Saving The Earth — or WASTE — held its bi-annual repair fair Nov. 12.

Held at the OSUsed store on the corner of A and 13th street, the repair fair was an opportunity for Oregon State University students and Corvallis community members to bring their broken items to be fixed free of charge.

The WASTE club began in 2012 and has been holding repair fairs in the fall and spring since 2015, according to WASTE President Kasey Gratz, with the intention of encouraging people to reuse and repair their items rather than throwing them away.

Stalls were set up for clothing, jewelry, electronics, housewares and bicycles, each managed by volunteers. These volunteers were also community members who had experience in their field making repairs.

Trinity Chernoff, a volunteer doing jewelry repair, spoke about why she repairs her own items rather than buying new ones.

“I don’t like buying new things, because I don’t have a lot of money but also because I don’t like throwing things away and going into landfills. So yeah, if it’s able to be fixed I don’t know why it shouldn’t be,” Chernoff said.

When an attendee brought an item to be repaired, the volunteer fixing it would sit down with them and walk them through the process from start to finish in order to teach them how to repair their items themselves.

Rose Smith, a student attending the repair fair, brought a crocheted vest that had a loose thread. In just a few minutes from sitting down at one of the clothing repair tables she walked away with a fixed vest and the knowledge of how it was done.

“I think teaching people how to do it and making it a safe place for people to come and learn how to do stuff that they don’t know how to do already is super important. I think it’ll prevent a lot of waste if people are able to repair their stuff instead of just throwing it away,” Smith said.

Additionally, there were multiple stalls dedicated entirely to workshops, where attendees could learn sustainable and crafty skills. These included embroidery and ecobricking — the practice of stuffing soft plastics into plastic bottles to make bricks for building material.

Gratz said that workshops have been a big part of the repair fair for years, changing with each year. 

In previous years, the repair fair has held workshops ranging from shoe cleaning to laundry detergents — each with the goal of teaching people how to live sustainably.

According to Gratz, the point of the repair fair is to be a jumping off point, to teach people how to be sustainable with their belongings and show attendees that they don’t need to constantly buy new clothes and household items when they break.

“I think repair fairs are super important because we don’t want to create waste. Instead of doing that, we can fix things… Instead of just tossing your stuff, you can come here and learn how to fix it yourself… It creates less waste,” Gratz said.

Another repair fair is planned for the Spring term, with the possibility of more in the winter and spring terms, according to Gratz. 

Students who are interested in the repair fair and WASTE can find them on Instagram at @osuwaste.