Repair Cafés are free meeting places focussed on repairing things (together). At a Repair Café, you’ll find tools and materials to help you make repairs - to clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances, toys, and more. You’ll also find a mix of expert and skilled amateur volunteers, with repair capabilities in all kinds of fields.
Bring in your broken items from home. Together with the specialists, you can start making repairs in the Repair Café. It’s an ongoing learning process. If you have nothing to repair, you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee, lend a hand with someone else’s repair job, or simply find out more about local action for sustainability and spend time with like-minded people.
There are more than 2,500 Repair Cafés worldwide, and 28 in Hampshire alone. Help us to establish and run one in, and for, Petersfield!
But why should we repair things?
We throw away vast amounts of 'stuff'. Even items that have almost nothing wrong with them, and which could get a new lease on life after a simple repair. 28 million tonnes of waste is generated by UK households each year.
The trouble is, many people have forgotten that they can repair things themselves, or have simply fallen out of the habit of doing so. Younger generations often no longer know how to do it. Knowing how to make repairs is a skill quickly lost from one generation to the next. This is a threat to a sustainable future and to the circular economy, in which raw materials can be reused again and again.
That’s why Repair Cafés exist! And the benefits are numerous: people with repair skills get the appreciation they deserve, invaluable practical skills are passed on, items are being used for longer and don’t have to be thrown away. This reduces the volume of raw materials and energy needed to make new products, and this in turn cuts CO2 emissions.
Most of all, Repair Cafés want to show how much fun repairing things can be, and how easy it often is. Why don’t you give it a go?
We hope to launch Petersfield Repair Café in March, so keep your eyes peeled for updates! We will publish event information on our Events web page, on our Facebook and Instagram accounts, and in our newsletter. Please follow or subscribe to stay in the loop.
If you are a keen repairer, or you would like to volunteer your time to help Repair Café get off the ground and run smoothly in another capacity, please get in touch with us. Repair Café cannot exist without a wonderful team of volunteers!