That old laptop collecting dust on your bookshelf may have a new lease on life, or at least get responsibly recycled, thanks to the upcoming Cornell Bowers CIS Earth Day Repair Fair.
This Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22, local repair pros and members of the Cornell and Ithaca reuse community will be on-hand from 4 to 7 p.m. in the Gates Hall lobby to fix – or teach you how to fix – defunct tech hardware, from laptops and computers to keyboards and headphones. For devices beyond repair, unneeded gear, or that mystery adapter, organizers will be collecting donations with the Cornell Computer Reuse Association (CCRA) for reuse or responsible e-waste recycling. “Anything with a cord (including the cord!)” will be accepted, organizers said. The event is open to the general public.
“This year, we have a particularly great team of fixers ready to help,” said Dylan Van Bramer ‘25, one of the fair’s organizers.
Now in its third year, the Repair Fair is a hybrid crash course in do-it-yourself repair and e-waste recycling drive. It’s also an opportunity to learn about the environmental impacts of computing and consumer technology and the growing right-to-repair movement – a push for manufacturers to make products people can freely fix and modify themselves.
The hope is to begin tackling global e-waste at the local level. In 2022, countries produced a record 62 million tons of e-waste, and only 22 percent was responsibly recycled, according to the United Nations.
At last year’s fair, volunteers repaired 15 laptops, donated about 100 laptops, keyboards, and mice, and collected more than 450 pounds of e-waste to be recycled through Cornell’s R5 operations, Van Bramer said.
The Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, Cornell’s Campus Sustainability Office, and CCRA will host the fair. New to the slate this year: at 5 p.m., organizers will do a laptop teardown demo to demystify a device found in roughly 80 percent of American households. The fair will also feature project posters from students in Computing on Earth (INFO 4260).
By Louis DiPietro, a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.