Elizabeth Chamberlain and Kyle Wiens of iFixit
Kyle, CEO of iFixit, has been traveling to developing countries, investigating what happens to our hardware after we dispose of it and getting to know people who repair that hardware, with simple tools and self-taught engineering know-how. Visiting the slums of Kibera, the electronics scrapyards of Delhi, and Cairo's infamous Garbage City, Kyle has been filming a documentary about these "fixers," brilliant repair experts in unlikely places. Kyle has written about his travels for a number of publications, including Wired and The Atlantic, and continues to write about repair, e-waste, and people who love to fix it themselves.
Elizabeth's interest in e-waste was sparked when, as a teenager, she learned about how groundwater can become contaminated with mercury and other poisons when people throw used electronics in the trash. In response, she founded a school club dedicated to encouraging companies and individuals to dispose properly of hazardous household waste, such as televisions, fluorescent light bulbs, and batteries. Having received an MA in English from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Elizabeth now writes for iFixit about repair, e-waste, and people who love to fix it themselves.
Latest Stories from Elizabeth Chamberlain and Kyle Wiens of iFixit
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Game On: How to Fix 3 Common Game Console Problems
If you play video games, you probably know the feeling: the disc jams, the friendly green lights turn red, the screen goes suddenly and disconcertingly dark.
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Repair Is Green: Two Simple iPhone Repairs You Can Do at Home
Not ready to upgrade from your iPhone 4? Here are a couple of simple, inexpensive repairs you can perform at home to get your phone back up to snuff.
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On Having The Right Tools for Repair Jobs
Trevor Bugera fixed two iPods this week—his wife's Mini and her friend's Nano.
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Building a Laptop, Frankenstein Style
When Juan Ordonez's daughter started clamoring for a computer, he decided to take two broken iBooks and combine them into one working computer.
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Don't You Know that Grandma's the Fix-It Girl?
Most people don't get into computer repair by driving a school bus, but Jodi Spangler is definitely not most people.
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See Inside a Canadian E-Waste Recycling Facility
Servers were the size of refrigerators and a single CPU chip had about $300 of gold when FCM Recycling started harvesting precious metals from computers.
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Inside the Mind of a Master Repair Tech
Ralph has fixed computers since they were "chock-full of tubes and a big refrigerated room and a raised deck with all the cabling under plates on the floor."
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Building Kites, Fixing Bikes: How Greg Kono Started the West Seattle Fixers Collective
Greg Kono wasn't looking to start an organization. But one day last spring, a friend sent him an article about the New York Fixers Collective.
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UN Report: Up to 85% of Africa's E-Waste Comes from Within Africa
Last Friday, the UN Basel Convention's E-waste Africa Program reported their findings from studies in 5 West African countries over the last 3 years.
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How Nikon is Killing Camera Repair
On Jan. 16th, Nikon sent a letter to US camera repair shops saying "it will no longer make repair parts available for purchase by repair facilities that have not been authorized by Nikon Inc. to perform camera repairs."
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At the Makerspace Urbana Help Desk, You Have to Help, Too
Makerspace Urbana has a free community computer help desk, staffed entirely by volunteers who help people fix their stuff themselves.
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UK Company ReVend Revamps Fluorescent Light Bulb Recycling
The UK company reVend has teamed up with IKEA to make household hazardous waste recycling simple with "reverse vending machines" for spent bulbs and batteries.
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New York Fixers Collective Breaks the Mold by Fixing Stuff Together
The Fixers Collective in New York is one of the most established "fixerspaces," where repair experts and hobbyists gather once a month to fix stuff together.
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Sprint Promises "Improved Repairability," But Green Standards Still Fall Short
Sprint recently announced a new set of criteria for their environmental scorecard, used to evaluate phones they sell. "Improved repairability" is on the list, in addition to green packaging requirements.
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This E-Waste Infographic Raises More Questions than It Answers
How much e-waste is there, anyway? How reliable is the available data? And why is it important to find out? This infographic has been making the rounds on the internet for a while. But I'm skeptical.
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Ever Broken a Textbook Beyond Repair? Now, with iBooks, You Can!
On Thursday, Apple announced iBooks 2, iBooks Textbooks, and iBooks Author. If all your textbooks are on your iPad, what happens when it breaks?
