Repair café event coming to Caledon Seniors Centre

ecoCaledon hosting fourth and final event in its Enviro Challenge series

By ZACHARY ROMAN

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The final event in ecoCaledon's Enviro Challenge is coming soon.

From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on November 18, ecoCaledon will host a repair café event at the Caledon Seniors Centre in Bolton (7 Rotarian Way).

The repair café will feature over 15 fixers and exhibitors. 

Fixers can repair your broken clothes, jewelry, pottery and even small electrical items — and will show you how they do it. This all comes at no charge, and is part of ecoCaledon's drive to encourage people to live more sustainably.

There will also be speakers at the event, educating residents on topics like electric cars and ways to save money while reducing one's impact on the environment.

The event will also feature holiday crafts for kids and local sustainable vendors. 

All year long, ecoCaledon has been hosting its Enviro Challenge series. 

It launched in May with an event about reducing food waste and plant-based eating. There, residents learned how their food choices impact the environment. Local triathlete Jason Fonger was a guest speaker at the event, and he shared how he's able to compete at a high level while on an entirely vegan diet. 

Fonger said in order to address the climate crisis, meat consumption can't keep increasing indefinitely. Producing one beef burger takes around 2,500 litres of water and creates 20 per cent more greenhouse gas than a plant-based alternative. 

At the May event, ecoCaledon shared how even eating vegetarian on some days of the week can reduce one's carbon footprint. It also shared resources on meal planning and plant-based meal planning.

The Enviro Challenge continued in June with an event about transportation. At Caledon Day, ecoCaledon teamed up with the Caledon chapter of the Electric Vehicle Society to offer test drives of electric vehicles. 

At the event, ecoCaledon also shared ways people can reduce their carbon footprint when traveling such as by not idling and combining shopping trips. 

The third event in the Enviro Challenge was held in September and was all about saving energy at home, from small and simple actions to large home retrofits.

Residents learned of ways to save energy at home such as unplugging unused appliances and chargers, replacing old light bulbs with more efficient LED bulbs, and using an energy-efficient thermostat on an eco-setting.

John MacRae, co-chair of ecoCaledon, shared ways that Caledon residents have been implementing what they've learned from the Enviro Challenge in the lead up to its last event.

“Cita's made several veggie-based dinners including ‘Eggplant Rollatini' with tomatoes… Bob has been test driving electric cars so he will know his electric car of choice to buy later next year,” said MacRae. “Maria has applied for government grants and has a contractor ready to install an energy saving heat pump. Margo and her family are taking new energy-saving steps…”

For more information on ecoCaledon's Enviro Challenge and to sign up for it, those interested can visit ecocaledon.org.