Repair Cafes: How you can mend broken items for free
'Tis the season for a good spring clean, which for many of us can mean clearing out clutter and sifting through damaged or broken household items we've discarded to collect dust.
But instead of taking tired items to the dump or recycling centre, a new foundation called The Repair Cafe is opening its doors worldwide to offer the public an opportunity to fix and transform their lacklustre items with a group of specialist volunteers.
The Repair Cafe – originally launched in Amsterdam by founder Martine Postma – is a free meeting place encouraging visitors to bring in their broken household items to fix themselves alongside volunteer repair experts.
The foundation's mission is to preserve invaluable practical skills that are slowly diminishing amongst younger generations, and to promote more repairable products to counteract our single-use culture.
Visitors could also discover a love for brand new hobby – like sewing or upholstery – too. Plus, the repairs are free!
Here's everything to know about the Repair Cafe foundation....
What is a Repair Cafe?
Repair Cafes are described as free meeting places that encourages visitors to bring in items that need fixing so that they can repair it in collaboration with a set of expert volunteers. These volunteers have repair skills in all kinds of fields.
The ultimate aim is to breathe new life into damaged items so they can be used for longer, while improving our own repairs skills in the process.
These items could be clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances or toys.
Members of the public can also visit the cafe for a cup of tea if they're looking to lend a hand with someone else's repair job or if they just want to immerse themselves in some community spirit.
There are currently over 2,500 Repair Cafés worldwide – check to find one to visit in your area.
Who is founder Martine Postma?
Martine Postma is a Dutch environmentalist and former journalist who founded the first Repair Cafe in Amsterdam in 2009.
Martine went on to set up the Repair Café International Foundation to empower local communities to set up their own projects, which gained interest from Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, South Africa and Ukraine. She also wrote a manual and produced a starter kit.
Martine told The Washington Post that the idea was born when she asked herself: "Why do we make so much waste on a daily basis? Because we no longer do repairs. So I had this idea to reintroduce repairs as a normal and attractive activity in daily life."
The cafes also create a sense of community.
"You get to know your neighbours, to see that the person you pass on the street that you never talk to has some valuable knowledge and is not just an old guy," she added.
The Repair Cafe aims to counteract throwaway culture
The Repair Cafe aims to refresh our outlook on broken items – instead of our immediate reaction being to bin it, the foundation wants people to take a moment to see whether they could mend it first.
If we can become more appreciative of our belongings and our environment, it counteracts our single-use, throwaway culture, leading to less waste.
The foundation plans to endow a younger audience with important repair skills, which they see as imperative for a sustainable future and the circular economy, in which raw materials can be reused again and again.
If these invaluable practical skills can be passed on to the next generation before they become extinct, household items can be used for longer instead of being chucked out.
This in turn reduces the volume of raw materials and energy needed to make new products. It also cuts CO2 emissions because manufacturing new products and recycling old ones causes CO2 to be released.
Repair Café volunteers also visit schools to give repair lessons.
The Repair Cafe is making repairs affordable and accessible for everyone
Many of us worry that getting an item fixed is more costly than replacing it, but the Repair Cafe's services are free.
The Repair Cafe makes clear that it is not competing with professional repair specialists. Instead, the cafe is demonstrating that we can most likely fix our broken items ourselves, with a bit of guidance or encouragement from specialists.
The cafe says that visitors are often advised to seek a professional if their item cannot be easily fixed.
Older items are easier to fix than their modern counterparts
The Repair Cafe's general rule is: the older your product, the greater the chance that the repair will succeed.
Good news for those who have items that hold sentimental value.
Older items tend to be easier to fix, especially those manufactured before 1980. "The more modern items are more complicated and less visible," Martine told The Washington Post.
"The old one might have a few wires that need to be connected, but the modern products have chips, technology, and the casing is often sealed or melted together, or have special screws that nobody has a screwdriver for."
Where are the Repair Cafes?
Originating in Amsterdam in 2007, the cafes continue to branch out worldwide, with Repair Cafés in Belgium, Germany, France, the UK, the US and in dozens of other countries around the world. Repair Café has even made its way to India and Japan!
You can find your nearest Repair Cafe here, and there are 278 open in the UK to date. You can even start one yourself.
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