Fourth Living Lab Meeting in Tartu

Tartu Living Lab meeting for Community Fixing and Repair network development

On 25^th of April City of Tartu in cooperation with NGO Paranduskelder and Tartu Regional Energy Agency (TREA), had its fourth Living Lab meeting. Aim of this workshop was to share ideas of how to make community fixing and repair centers more popular and more accessible for all the citizens. It is also important to look over citizens’ consumption habits and attitude regarding repair and recycling of items. 

Circular economy is part of Tartu City Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP) and a good example of that is NGO Parandukelder (fixing and repair center) which hosted our event this time. A total of 18 participants from different interest groups (universities, local municipalities, businesses, community associations, NGOs, Estonian Environmental Investment Center, etc.) participated in this meeting.

NGO Paranduskelder made a survey which included the entire city. Aim of this survey was to find out how repair workshops could engage more citizens, who are typical users of repair workshops, what are the obstacles that stop people coming to repair workshops. 

Meeting ended with group work inspired by survey results presented before. With this group work we tried to find answers to questions like – why community fixing, and repair centers are necessary for citizens and for the city, what are the expected services they should offer and what could be a good business model for these kinds of institutions. Jaanus Tamm introduced the current situation and bottlenecks in the collection and recycling of plastic, batteries and biowaste in the Tartu region.

Event took place within the framework of the 2ISECAP, TREASoURcE and CURE+ projects.