New Zealand Celsias

G.A.B.E.E stands for “Garbage Alternatives – Bettering Earth’s Environment”.

What started out as a small trademe based business,  has now become a fully-fledged online store selling second hand appliance parts, and it's based  in Martinborough.

Cathy Hutchison moved to Martinborough just under 6 months ago with her family of 4 kids, and her partner John Henderson. Instead of leaving behind her part-time job – doing the trademe listings for Tawa salvager and recycler Stuart McKie – she decided to bring it with her, and make it bigger and better.

The GABEE philosophy is the practice of Repair rather than Replace, therefore prolonging the life of household whiteware appliances. Salvaging the still-working parts of otherwise scrapped machines makes good sense. Why throw away perfectly good, albeit slightly used, spare parts? When people trade their old machines for new, many of the parts on them are still in good working order. Stuart McKie collects these machines all around the Wellington region. He painstakingly dismantles, checks, and cleans the recyclable parts. The rest of the machine is taken to the yard as good clean scrap. The parts are then sent over to Cathy in Martinborough, who lists them for sale on her website.

You will find everything from dishwasher basket rollers, to replacement fridge shelves, to working parts like pumps and motors for the more DIY minded, on the Garbage Alternatives Website. There are thousands of parts available in the vast and varied catalogue. Parts that are sometimes very expensive and hard to get hold of, if you can even get them anymore from the manufacturer.

There are even some bits and pieces for the odd vacuum cleaner, and small appliances like blenders and coffee makers. But the bulk of the stock is for white ware – washing machines, ovens, fridges, dishwashers, microwaves and dryers

So next time something goes wrong with your appliance, check the GABEE website to see if they might have what you need to fix it. You can also donate your retired appliances, and perhaps help someone else’s machine get a new lease of life!

You can check out  the site here