Dishes, furniture, washing machines, flat screens, bikes, plus unique vintage items that commercial fashion chains don’t even have on offer. There are now 28 Revital shops in Upper Austria, they are operated by Volkshilfe (the largest provider) and other social organizations such as FAB or Diakonie. “I invite you to start your Christmas shopping this year in one of the Revital shops,” says Stefan Kaineder, State Councilor for Climate Protection and the Environment from the Greens. Because the circular economy has several major advantages.
If used defective goods are repaired and sold cheaply as “second hand” in the ReVital shops, then not only the mountains of rubbish are reduced and valuable resources are saved. At the same time, jobs are created in this revitalization process. These are also jobs for people who find it difficult to get a job on the regular job market. And last but not least, the products revitalized in the Upper Austrian way also meet high quality standards.
Upper Austria has taken on a pioneering role in the circular economy: 10,000 tons of processed Revital goods have been sold since 2009. All the revitalized washing machines alone would be about 90 kilometers long, says Roland Wohlmuth, the chairman of the Upper Austrian Waste Management Association (LAV). Because the environmental professionals from LAV support ReVital with their network of 180 waste material collection centers (ASZ). For example, if you want to make an old (defective) washing machine available to the circular economy, you can also hand it in to an ASZ.
A very special project is the “Kreislerin”, the Volkshilfe vintage cafe in the tobacco factory in Linz. A meeting point for young and old, where vintage rarities are traded and once a month broken items are repaired together. “We don’t need to do so much advertising with the younger generations,” says Jasmin Chansri, head of Volkshilfe. The idea of sustainability has already arrived there.
Second hand, Revital and Co: the social economy companies with a total of 140 branches also operate an online shop nationwide: widado.com, which in Austrian means “back again”.
Source: Nachrichten
