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Repair for Everyone: Bringing the power of repair to our communities

Writer's picture: Kamini Meech-MenonKamini Meech-Menon

Updated: Oct 17, 2024

Saturday 19th October is International Repair Day, and this year the day is celebrating Repair for Everyone. Our special guest blogger for the day is a Merton student who has volunteered their time to log data during our Repair Cafés and has seen first-hand the power of community repair.

Hi there! My name is Kamini, and I am a sixth form student, passionate about all things sustainability. I have now helped at the front desk twice at The Wheel’s Repair Café at Canons House, Mitcham, inputting the data of what items are being repaired.


My job is easier than what the repair volunteers do, but it is nonetheless rewarding to be part of a project that can make a lasting impact. I was involved in logging in data of each item that had come for repair, noting the type, weight, age and brand of item. With each item that was fixed, The Restart Project’s Fixometer tool was used to calculate the relative CO2 emissions and waste prevented in kg. Overall, The Restart Project has supported community repairing events around the world to prevent 3,673kg of waste and 82,480kg of CO2 emissions, which is equivalent to driving 687,333 km (a distance equal to circumnavigating the earth 17 times)!


The Importance of Repair in a Circular Economy

In my geography lessons at school, we learn about the importance of adopting circular economies to become more sustainable, which is the idea of minimizing waste and maximizing the use of resources. But this concept truly came to life through my experience at the Repair Café. Not only does it reduce waste, keeping items in circulation that might have been otherwise thrown away into the waste stream, but the project also increases resource efficiency. This is because the Repair Café encourages people to reuse products rather than replacing them, reducing the demand for resources. What is waste anyway? There is no such thing as “waste”, just things put in the wrong place.

 

The Impact of Community Repair

On my visits to the Repair Café, I have seen a plethora of items being fixed, from rucksacks to sewing machines, a pair of hair tongs to a blender, it seems no item is too big/small/heavy/old! On my last visit in July, a remarkable 176kg of CO2 emissions and 37kg of waste was prevented. That’s equivalent to growing 3 tree seedings for 10 years! The total number of items the fantastic repairers fixed on the day was 14 items (8 powered and 6 unpowered), with 1 item that the repairers could fix with additional parts and 1 that was at the end of its life and would need to be recycled.


Repair Cafés are excellent examples of sustainability’s social, environmental and economic pillars. Socially, there is interaction among volunteers and visitors, even an exchange of skills. Economically, visitors benefit from free repairs rather than buying replacements, while environmentally, waste and emissions are reduced.

 

Repair for Everyone

With all the daunting news of the twin climate and biodiversity crises, volunteering for Sustainable Merton’s The Wheel project offered me a sense of hope to see volunteers and residents coming together to support a positive initiative. The theme of this year's International Repair Day is “Repair for Everyone” and for this reason, I would encourage anyone, of any age, to come help – whether that be offering to be a repairer or bringing items to add to the positive stats of waste reduction. 





If you are interested in this wonderful community initiative, you can sign up to be a repairer on Sustainable Merton’s volunteer page or register a broken item to be repaired at their next Repair Café event here. The project would benefit from skilled small electrical and textiles repairers and would love to hear from you.


Happy International Repair Day!




 




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