Don’t ask, Rob! Today’s been a nightmare! This morning I ripped my jeans and later my computer stopped working! Then, when I tried taking it to a repair shop, my car wouldn’t start!
Oh no, that’s terrible! And the really bad news is that in today’s consumer culture, when something breaks we usually throw it away and buy a new one, instead of trying to repair it.
The world generates over two billion tonnes of rubbish every year.
全世界每年产生超过20亿吨垃圾。
Sam(山姆)
So we’re visiting companies in Sweden making it easier to mend things when they break instead of replacing them – whether that’s clothes, bikes or washing machines.
And my quiz question is about one of those companies - Fixi, a repair service that collects broken bikes from your door and brings them back fixed. The company was started by Rafi Mohammad, a student of Industrial Innovation at the University of Stockholm. But what was the inspiration behind Rafi’s idea? Was it: a) he wanted to impress his girlfriend?; b) he was sick of breathing in the city’s car fumes? or c) he was late for his lecture because of a flat tyre?
OK, Sam, we’ll find out about Rafi and his love life later on. But whatever the inspiration behind it, Rafi’s idea was a success – Fixi took more than six hundred orders in its first six months.
Rafi’s isn’t the only Swedish company helping people fix things instead of buying new. Denim company, Nudie Jeans, was started with a focus on ethics and sustainability.
It’s just been a given that when your jeans break, you throw them away, so when I heard that you can repair them easily without any cost then it was a bit of a no- brainer for me.
Even though they’re good at recycling, people in wealthy Sweden still buy lots of new stuff and they have a big carbon footprint for a country of just 10 million.
But it’s interesting that all the innovators behind these companies say that in their grandparents’ day, it was normal to repair, fix and mend broken stuff.
Jessika Richter is a researcher at Lund University. She thinks repairing is an endangered activity that we used to do more of, both individually and as a society.
Here she is talking to BBC World Service’s, People Fixing the World programme, about the need to get back in touch with older ways of doing things:
在这里，她正在与BBC世界服务部的“人们修复世界”节目谈论，关于重新接触旧有的做事方式的必要性：
Jessika Richter(杰西卡·里希特)
It really is a peer effect and a culture that we’re trying to foster here - changing a culture of consumption. The more people that are repairing and the more people that are choosing to buy repair services or more repairable products, the more we will see this going mainstream – and it used to be mainstream, so that’s what makes me positive too, that it is in some ways a return to what we used to be able as a society to do more of.
Stories about Sweden’s repair shops spread between friends and Jessika thinks this creates a peer effect - the positive or negative influence friends have on the way you behave.
She hopes this will foster – or encourage to grow - a new culture of sustainable consumption…
她希望这将促进或鼓励发展一种新的可持续消费文化......
Sam(山姆)
…so that fixing broken stuff will be mainstream, or be considered normal, once again.
...因此，修复损坏的东西将再次成为主流，或者被认为是正常的。
Rob(罗伯)
Yes, that’s a big part of the problem – repairing was something we all used to do, but seem to have forgotten.
是的，这是问题的很大一部分 —— 维修是我们过去都会做的事情，但似乎已经忘记了。
Sam(山姆)
Hopefully, we’ll all be inspired to start fixing things again, or at least pay someone else to! And speaking of inspiration, what was the answer to your quiz question, Rob?
/1 
