Call for more repair cafés in Cambridgeshire

The Cambridgeshire Repair Café Network is launching a campaign to support more local groups start their own Repair Cafés.

Founded in 2016 by Cambridge Carbon Footprint, Transition Cambridge and two local Repair Cafés, the network provides the tools and resources to help communities start and run their own Repair Cafés that bring together communities and local volunteer repairers to help fix items for free.

Their new campaign will run until today (Friday, April 29) and aims to raise £5,000 which they will use to recruit more repairers, train more organisers, and run more workshops. Backed by the Big Give’s Green Match fund, any donations made during the campaign will be doubled.

Manager at Cambridge Carbon Footprint, Alana Sinclair says: “These days people are looking for ways to re-connect with their community, save money, and live more sustainably. Repair Cafes are fantastic at bringing people together to help one another share skills, cut waste, and save resources. And they can help Cambridgeshire play its part in tackling the climate emergency too.”

“Lamps, kitchen appliances, small devices, clothes, and bikes are often easily fixed, but many people don’t know where to start. The Cambridgeshire Repair Café Network has lots of volunteers with the right know how who are willing to help. If we can keep good household items working longer, it saves all the materials and emissions needed to make something new.

“We’re launching this campaign because the interest in Repair Cafés is huge. The Cambridgeshire Repair Café Network has grown rapidly, from just two groups to more than 26 and we’re no longer able to keep up with demand. We want to raise £5000 so that we can meet that demand and continue to grow. We’d love everyone in Cambridgeshire to be able to pop into a local Repair Café when they need something fixed, and we hope that people will donate to the campaign to help make it happen. Thanks to the Big Give Green Match Fund all donations will have double the impact.”

The Cambridgeshire Repair Cafe Network has had an outsized impact on the global repair movement, hosting more repair events than anywhere else in the UK, and setting the record for organising the World's Biggest Repair Cafe in 2017.

Money Saving Expert listed Repair Cafes as their number three tip in their latest cost of living crisis survival guide, promoting them as a good choice to help avoid the unexpected costs of replacing big ticket items like laptops.

A briefing, published by The Community Repair Network on last year’s International Repair Day, shows the Cambridgeshire Repair Café Network is part of a growing tide of repair groups demonstrating the benefits of repair for our economy, environment, and communities. The briefing highlights:

Manufacturing and extracting materials, including for new products, is responsible for up to 50 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide

The UK is the world’s second biggest producer of electronic waste per capita. Per person, we create 23.9kg of electronic waste each year. Repairing instead of discarding and buying new would cut our climate impact.

Repair, reuse and remaking could create 450,000 green jobs across the country.

75% of people in the UK think the Government should make sure products are easier to repair