Longtime So Cal resident Charles Carr is a nationally published journalist and playwright. His award-winning Southpaw column has appeared in college textbooks published by Macmillan, St. Martin's Press, Bedford, and others. Charles writes Southpaw for his hometown newspapers, The Times-Advocate and The Roadrunner.

The R to R

The letter R sure pops up a lot. There’s reading, writing, and arithmetic. And Toys "R" Us. Everyone likes to get a little R&R. Pirates try to get at least one into every sentence. But my favorite might be reduce, reuse, and recycle. Words to live by, but I'd make that trio a quartet by adding one more R: repair. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates reuse alone preserves up to 95% of the energy and resources originally used in manufacturing. Coupled that with repair and the savings shoot into the stratosphere. Nothing beats just hanging on to your stuff.

  There was a time that wasn't news. Many of us have fond memories of relatives who lived through the Depression and the remarkable values that were forged during that era. I watched my grandmother carefully wash off and smooth out aluminum foil, then stow it away to be used over and over again. There was foil in that house older than I was. And she continued right on doing it even when the material became cheap and plentiful. Man, that generation stretch a casserole. They saved everything, reused everything. And fixed everything. You did it yourself or took it to a repair shop. It was all built to last. It had to be.

  And then, it didn’t.

  It seemed to happen so fast: so-called single-use plastics showed up as bottles, shopping bags, packaging, and just about everything else. A lot of things we buy are basically trash the moment we walk out the door. I remember the first time I heard a repairman utter the words, “Sure, I can fix it, but it’d be cheaper to buy a new one and just throw this one away.” Just throw it away. About the third time I heard it, even as a kid I realized humanity was at a disastrous crossroads in our relationship with nature.

  Things don’t last because they’re not supposed to last. It’s sad to note that even with all we now know about our affect on the planet, some of the battles we’re fighting now are tougher than ever. Consumers are currently in a knock-down-drag-out with the biggest corporations on earth (Apple, Google, GE, Microsoft, keep going) over whether we should have the right to repair our own stuff (let's coin it: R to R). Wrong direction. You know, being allowed the privilege to take your cracked phone or tablet screen to a kiosk in the mall where they’ll fix it for a reasonable price. Did I mention it’s your own stuff? The manufacturers claim it’s to ensure quality, but I think the primary quality getting ensured is their CEO’s new house in the Hamptons. We all know how it goes: The store quotes an insultingly high price to do a simple repair and just by coincidence a shiny new one just happens to be on sale for about the price of the repair. And, on cue, you roll your eyes and out comes your credit card. Again. And your old device gets tossed onto a mini-Everest of cast-off electronics in some faraway place over which children excitedly scamper to mine their toxic components. Like they’re lucky.

  Make it your mission to fix as many of your things as you can (and save yourself a ton of money in the process). Learn how to sew, to tape, to glue, maybe even how to solder the occasional dangling metal thingy to another metal thingy. It’s astonishing how many still-useful items get thrown away just because something is cracked or loose or needs the right jiggle. Even thrift stores can’t be bothered; they just toss them. If you’re not the handy sort, find someone who is and learn from them. (“Teach a man how to work a glue gun and he’ll… ” Er, I might have missed Sunday school that week.)

  When you fix it, take a victory lap. Let everyone see how proud you are. Encourage repair and reuse programs in your community and right-to-repair laws in your state. And when you do purchase that wonderful new this or that, make it clear that its reputation for longevity and repairability were essential factors in your decision.

  I'm talking about something much bigger here than just getting good with a wrench. I'm talking about an America heritage every one of us shares. A new-old way to live, holy in its own way. A life in which we use as much as we need and no more. A life in which rampant consumerism and conspicuous consumption are no longer viewed as status symbols.

  Then, when we’ve transition back to a value system more like our grandparents,’ one that once again prizes quality over crap, we can reap perhaps the biggest reward of all: offering good people work they can be proud of; fulfilling jobs producing the well-made, reusable, and repairable products of the future that no longer treat our world as just another garbage can.

Talk about a win-win.