Repairing instead of throwing away

Repairing instead of throwing away - this was the guiding principle that brought together teachers, pupils and researchers at the University of Oldenburg's lecture centre in mid-March. The final conference of the RETIBNE research project took place there.

RETIBNE stands for "Repair in Education for Sustainable Development" - a project in which Oldenburg scientists from the Technical Education working group, in co-operation with eight universities, researched how the topics of repair, maintenance and upcycling can be incorporated into school lessons. The central points of the conference programme included two keynote speeches: Educational scientist Prof Dr Gerhard de Haan from the Free University of Berlin spoke about the United Nations' Agenda 2030 and the extent to which it promotes the topic of "sustainability in schools". In the second keynote speech, Sepp Eisenriegler presented the repair and service centre R.U.S.Z from Vienna. In this project, formerly long-term unemployed mechatronics engineers repair defective electrical appliances.

Scientists and practitioners also gave numerous short presentations on the topic of sustainable education and the premise of using objects for as long as possible. The programme was complemented by eight workshops in which teachers were given practical tips for technology lessons - for example, how to teach pupils how to repair their own bicycles. Other workshops were dedicated to screen printing or mobile phone repair, for example. Another highlight was the "Pupils' University", a programme for children and young people in years 5 to 10: pupils from three RETIBNE cooperation schools presented their own repair projects in the large lecture hall.

In the RETIBNE project, technically and financially supported by the German Federal Environmental Foundation, scientists have developed materials for technology lessons over the past three years. The topics range from practical tips for repairing a laptop to theoretical considerations on obsolescence - the phenomenon of technical devices increasingly breaking down shortly after the warranty expires.