RepaNet

A range of low buildings in a yard near Graz's railway station is home to Ökoservice , and the base for four different environmental services:

• chopping, removing and composting garden waste, for the local authority environment department and for local householders. There is a steady demand;
• the hire of recycling catering equipment for events, operating out of a warehouse full of racks of plastic tumblers, plates and cutlery, all neatly crated and shrink-wrapped. This service was born in 1999 when Graz won the football cup, and the town's Liebenauer Stadium was left littered with disposable cups. The city's environment department put up €140,000 to buy a large-capacity washing machine which meant reusable plastic tumblers could be used. The service now reuses over a million tumblers a year – and turnover still peaks when Graz wins at football. There are some 200 regular customers, who value guaranteed quality and predictable costs;
• the dismantling and recycling of electrical equipment, which is done in collaboration with a private company.
• a 280 kW combined heat and power (CHP) station, the result of a university research project, has been installed in a freight container opposite the warehouse, and turns 70 tons a year of used frying oil into electric power, as well as heating the premises. The service collects 200 tons of oil a year from restaurants. What is not used in the co-generation plant is sent to southern Styria for processing into biodiesel. Some of it comes back as fuel for Graz's buses, lending them a distinctive smell.

A more specialised operation is based on an industrial estate in Liezen, 120 kilometres northwest of Graz amid the mountains of Northern Styria. This industrial town of 7,000 was once the home of state-owned engineering firm Voestalpine. The works closed down in the 1990s with the loss of over a thousand skilled craft jobs. GBL (Gemeinnützige Beschäftigungsgesellschaft Liezen) has created products that make good use both of these specialist skills and of traditional local materials. The most original line produced is water wheels. The workshop helped renovate three old watermills and the idea grew from there. The normal size is one-and-a-half metres across, but they make them as big as three metres. And they are all made from local larch wood. The company has found a niche market at the intersection of tourism, the environment and science education, and also fabricates items such as Archimedes screws, which make popular hands-on exhibits at a local water theme park.

The waterwheels are GBL's trademark, but its high skills base means that the enterprise can fabricate all sorts of metal or wood prototypes and is always on the lookout for new product ideas. It has contracts to make high-end wooden office equipment and mountings for diesel engines, and is experimenting with ideas such as ceramic plaques and wooden toys.

It also renovates and repairs household equipment, especially white goods (washing machines, dishwashers, tumble driers, electric stoves etc.), which it sells with a one-year guarantee. It also offers a wide range of services both in the open air – cleaning historical monuments, landscaping, building footpaths, cycle paths and [[cross-country skiing trails, clearing snow, maintaining playing fields and other open spaces – as well as indoors, such as house clearance.

GBL's workshop is open-plan, as it is important for customer confidence that they can see the repairs being done. This means they both have trust in the quality of the renovation, and can identify with the enterprise's social values. The enterprise works as part of the local Repair Network, along with 25 other local businesses. They pay an annual fee of €100. Working together means they have a more prominent brand and can refer customers to the best specialist.

GBL employs 21 handicapped people, 12 long-term unemployed 'transit workers' and 17 key workers, and has a 70% success rate in placing people in permanent jobs. New employees rotate round the different jobs for the first few months so that the enterprise can find out where their strengths and interests lie. Especially for women, GBL runs a taster course where they can try three different professions in a week – carpentry, metalwork and electronics – to see what suits them best. It finds that women want part-time work and flexible working hours, but the problem is that AMS can normally only find full-time posts. Each job costs an estimated €25,000 to fill – but there is a signicant saving as regards the economic and social costs of unemployment.

The Institut für Höhere Studien in Vienna investigated the issue of costs in a study of RUSZ, a similar workshop in Vienna, which places 55% of its trainees in permanent jobs. It found that if they stay employed and pay tax for 3.5 years, then the state breaks even. Even if they do not find an external job, keeping someone in unemployment benefit for a year costs the state about €43,000, but supporting a job in the social economy costs only half that.[1]

RepaNet is based on the principle that a table needs three legs, or it will fall over. It applies this analogy to the provision of social services in today's cash-strapped climate. The demand for social services is rising, but the resources to meet it are not. So the social economy has been seen as a substitute for public or private action. But the project does not see itself as a substitute, and believes that triangular partnerships are needed.

Based on this principle, RepaNet brings in not just the local authorities, labour market service and environmental activists, but also local SMEs. When it builds up a local Repair Network, it can bring local small businesses on board because they gain market contacts and benefit from sharing know-how, as well as providing jobs for thetrainees. Partnership with the companies means that RepaNet is kept abreast of the skills that are in demand, and can recruit trainees with matching aptitudes and desires. The EQUAL project gives each network a kick start by supporting the costs of two key workers – a trainer and a strategist.

The development partnership also has a 'vertical' dimension, linking the regional networks with the key decision makers at national level, including the environment ministry, employers and trade unions. But the key relationship is with the local town councils, the Gemeinden. Shared environmental goals mean that a close relationship is relatively easy to establish. A shared history also helps: ARGE Müllvermeidung, which was founded in 1982, has since 1986 run educational courses for 300 waste advisers. Many of these people are now working in local authority environment departments, and are partners in the project via the Abfallwirtschaftsverein. The ARGE is well known, and the connection between the social economy and ecology comes easily to people's minds. Nevertheless, local businesses sometimes fear that employment companies may constitute unfair competition, so it is an asset to have the ministry and chamber of commerce (Wirtschaftkammer) behind it.

Institutional anchoring is vital to the RepaNet idea. So although its primary ideological drive is to reduce environmental damage through waste minimisation, it sometimes seems reluctant to go out and sell the products it so inventively designs and manufactures. It does not want to forget what sort of a business it is – one that integrates unemployed people back into the workforce.

The project has a vision that builds from the bottom up to European level. Thanks to the support of EQUAL, the RepaNet model has spread from Vienna and Graz to five other regions in Austria. Altogether, the five enterprises employ 90 people and repair 4,000 items of equipment a year. Each repair centre has its own speciality: in Graz it is audio, video and computers, in Liezen white goods, in Ried-im-Innkreis bicycles, in Vienna computers – and multifunctional Hohenems tackles white goods, computers and bicycles. Under the aegis of the national federation, two more regional networks are in their formative stages.

The national federation Reparaturnetzwerk Österreich is in turn a member of the European network RREUSE (Recycling and Reuse European Social Enterprises) , which was established in 2001. Most environmental legislation is decided at European level now, so having an EU-wide voice is seen as vital. RREUSE holds meetings with the Environment Commissioner and European parliamentarians, and seems to have had a real influence on the WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) directive. It has also submitted a joint response to the public consultation on the EU sustainable development strategy.

As well as lobbying for policy change, RREUSE helps its members to develop the best delivery mechanisms. Its 1,000 member enterprises employ 16,000 people across ten countries of Europe. In March 2004 RREUSE members came to Graz to take part in the exchange mart the RepaNet DP organised within their transnational partnership SENECA – Social economy network for environmental co-operation activities (TCA 237). The event enabled participating organisations to exchange ideas for new environmental businesses in the social economy, by addressing both customers and producers. Customer awareness is built through the visibility of the services offered to the public, such as the BAN repair workshop or the garden waste composting service. On the supply side, the regional RepaNet networks bring in small businesses and enable them to swap skills and knowledge to their mutual advantage. National and international networking also gives access to economies of scale in marketing. A number of RREUSE member firms have established an EEIG (European economic interest group) called Serranet to carry out marketing at European level, using such channels as the internet or a catalogue.

The project contributes to the strategy set out in the European Commission's Integrated guidelines for growth and jobs (2005-2008),.[2] Its Guideline 14 encourages the adoption of environmental technologies, guideline 15 calls for local industrial clusters, and guideline 18 recommends measures to include disadvantaged people in the labour market.

Thus, it was part of a 'development partnership' (Reparaturnetzwerk Österreich, DP no. AT-3-08/135) within the EQUAL Community Initiative, part of the European Union's Structural Funds. Its lead organisation was Arbeitsgemeinschaft Müllvermeidung, Dreihackengasse 1, 8020 Graz, Austria, telephon: +43 316 71 23 09, e-mail schleich@arge.at (Berthold Schleich). Partner organisations in Austria were:

• Abfallwirtschaft Tirol Mitte GmbH
• BAN – Beratung Arbeit Neubeginn, Verein zur Beratung und Beschäftigung von Arbeitslosen
• Bundesministerium für Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Umwelt und Wasserwirtschaft
• Caritas der Diözese Feldkirch
• Die Umweltberatung – Verband österreichischer Umweltberatungsstellen, Gemeinnützige Beschäftigungsgesellschaft mbH Liezen
• Rieder Initiative für Arbeitslose
• Verband Abfallberatung Österreich
• Verband Wiener Volksbildung – Projekt RUSZ
• Wirtschaftskammer Österreich
• Österreichischer Abfallwirtschaftsverein
• Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund

RepaNet's work was taken forward in two new development partnerships in the second round of EQUAL: Econet Austria focused on setting up integration firms in the recycling of electronic waste, while PSPP' (Public Social Private Partnership) aimed to take social enterprise into new fields.

• Official website: https://www.repanet.at/