Local film Director Brett Nicoletti has featured another hidden Pasadena gem in his new short documentary film titled, “Repair Café ‘Building Resilience.’”
Repair Café is an international nonprofit organization that helps communities become more sustainable by holding meetings where people can have items repaired for free to reduce waste and improve the environment.
There are over a thousand locations that organize Repair Café events all over the world, but in Nicoletti’s short documentary he features the location in Pasadena.
There are many skilled people who may be able to help and teach ways to repair a variety of items — such as clothing, bikes and electronics — at the Repair Café event based in Pasadena.
The short film highlights the different people who repair items and how they enjoy helping others. It also features Martine Postman, founder of Repair Café.
In the film, Postman shares her vision of wanting more Repair Café events around the world and why it is important to bring communities together and share the knowledge of repairing.
Per the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in 2017 the average person produced about 4.51 pounds of trash per day, that is over 260 million tons per year, give or take. Landfill spaces in the U.S. and other countries have been filling up quicker in the last few years due to China banning foreign waste for recycling.
With so many local organizations that support eco-friendly policies in Pasadena, people seem to be more inclined to changing behaviors that will reduce their carbon footprint. Events such as Repair Café give people an opportunity to reduce waste by getting items fixed that would otherwise, perhaps, end up in trash bins.
Nicoletti’s film captures the spirit of community that occurs when a Repair Café event in Pasadena happens and the great people who make it possible. The experience can be rewarding on both ends of a repairing station and the impact this event has on reducing waste is an added incentive to the whole idea of having broken items repaired for free in your local community.
The short film features what a resilient community can look like when we all come together with the purpose of bringing sustainable living to our local neighborhoods.
