usethings tinker

Stuff should last… you buy things to perform a function and they should do that for as long as possible… generations even! This is the aim of usethings designed products and the products we stock in usethings store.

Durability is one of the key tenants of sustainable design. Design it to last to reduce the number of products you needĀ  to perform a certain task over a life-time. This means less cumulative impacts from the making and disposal of all the products performing that task over that lifetime.

The next echelon of durability is maintain, followed repair, then for the creative, re-purposing (finding another function that uses the materials or engineering in an object).

This is where usethings tinker comes in.

We use tinker in its traditional sense: an itinerant tinsmith, who mended household utensils. Well we are not itinerant but we will mend household items – repair, maintain, sharpen… bring it in and we’ll see what we can do. We’d also consider ‘hacks’ or re-purposing; tinker in the sense: fooling around with technology, there is some great engineering in products that is too good to waste when only one bit fails.

TheĀ  pot on the right is made in durable stainless steel. It gets its ‘stainless’ (rust proof) qualities from the addition of chromium 6, one of the nastiest chemicals humans produce. If we had thrown this pot out when the handle fell off and got another one, that would mean more chromium 6 is used for the new pot and the impacts of making the first lot are no longer balanced by the useful item produced.

usethings tinkering service – repair, maintain, sharpen… whatever it takes to keep it going. Make an appointment with Tim 0405 564 206 and bring your broken thing down to our store to discuss turning it back into a usething.

 

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