EcoCaledon highlights local green initiatives at Earth Day repair cafe 

By Zachary Roman

Relying on each other as a community is important.

This is one of the key ideas behind repair cafes, events where community members can bring in their damaged items such as clothes and bikes to be fixed by others in their community.

EcoCaledon is a local non-profit that promotes environmental programs, projects and activities designed to enhance and protect Caledon's environment and reverse global warming. It's held a few repair cafes before, but the one held recently on April 22, Earth Day, was the biggest and most successful yet.

Lucrezia Chiappetta, co-chair of EcoCaledon, had just finished a community cleanup with the Girl Guides of Bolton when she stopped for an interview with the Citizen at the repair cafe.

The cafe was held at the Caledon Seniors Centre and the Girl Guides of Bolton cleaned up the area all around it from items like plastic water bottles and cigarette butts, despite the rainy spring weather.

Chiappetta said the point of Earth Day is to celebrate the beautiful planet we have and to think about the actions we are taking to protect it.

“What better way to celebrate than finding a way that we can give back in a positive way?” said Chiappetta. “Being able to repair items instead of sending them to the landfill… we're promoting community engagement.”

At the repair cafe, EcoCaledon had a booth set up where it told residents about its upcoming “Caledon Cares Enviro-Challenge.” It's an event supported by the Town of Caledon's Climate Action Fund, and it's going to be a year-long challenge residents can take part to do their part in battling climate change.

The first part of the challenge begins in May and the theme is Food: How to Eat to Save the Planet.

On May 6, EcoCaledon is hosting a lunch and learn event at the Caledon Seniors Centre. Attendees will get a free plant-based lunch and learn about how food relates to climate change. There will be a guest speaker, local vegan triathlete Jason Fonger, who will be talking about the benefits to being plant-based.

Chiappetta said the repair cafe showed residents how they can build resilience together by working as a community and sharing knowledge.

After the cafe, Chiappetta said she received a testimonial from a local resident, Annalee, who was really happy with her experience and the work of two volunteer fixers, Paul and Kaz.

“The repair cafe was such a great idea. I brought in three appliances that I needed fixed. One couldn't be fixed so it is going into the garbage. One was taken by Paul and he took it back to his workshop at home and was able to fix it. Not only did he save me money he also saved me time and energy trying to figure out how to get it fixed. I am beyond happy,” wrote Annalee. 

“Now I'm waiting to hear back on my other appliance but even if it doesn't get repaired, these two men have gone out of their way to fix items that would likely have been thrown away into landfill, cost me more money to buy these items new and their customer service is impeccable! This just shows us that this is another way for people to do their part in saving our Mother Earth. Thank you to Paul and Kaz and thank you for having the repair cafe!”

Betty de Groot, a member of EcoCaledon also runs the Turtle Green Refillery. She had a booth set up at the repair cafe to talk about her business. The refillery offers non-toxic household and personal care products in refillable containers, with the goal of reducing the number of plastic containers used in homes in Caledon.

In January 2022, de Groot took over Turtle Green Refillery from another EcoCaledon member, Carolyn Vallejo. 

“The idea is we don't need to always have new packaging every time. We just want the stuff that's in the container,” said de Groot. “That's why we buy it, not for something that we want to keep dumping into landfills.”

Hand soap, dish soap, and laundry soap are de Groot's biggest sellers. She travels around Caledon and beyond with large containers of these items and more to refill customer's containers. Many of Turtle Green's deliveries are made by electric car too.

There is a new refillery store in Bolton called Viva Earth Refillery, noted de Groot. The idea of refilling is expanding, and she said it's great and now residents in Caledon have more options for refilling their commonly-used items.