IT IS just before ten on a Saturday morning. A queue has formed outside St Mary’s, Putney, of people carrying defunct kettles and toasters, clothes to be mended, and garden tools to be fixed. They are waiting for the doors to open at a repair café run by volunteers at St Mary’s — one of an estimated 3500 repair cafés in 35 countries around the world (Feature, 5 November 2021).
The growing movement is focused on restoring broken belongings rather than discarding them. Mending and fixing items is nothing new, but repair cafés are a recent response to concerns over throwaway culture and the mounting environmental crisis.
The first opened in 2009, when a Dutch journalist, Martine Postma, organised a free event where people could bring household items to be fixed by volunteers. Ms Postma subsequently set up the Repair Café International Foundation in Amsterdam. Its resources are now used by cafés worldwide. Open Repair Alliance, an international collaboration of community repair networks, says that an estimated 190,000 successful repairs are now being made each year.
The movement is making political demands, too, taking on the world’s biggest companies through legislation that will force them to make products that are reparable; and new legislation was adopted by the European Parliament in April 2024.
Repair Café International Foundation estimates there are at least 438 repair cafés operating in the UK. A spokesperson for the A Rocha UK Eco Church team said that it was aware of a growing number of churches, “many part of the Eco Church community, engaging in running repair cafés, clothes-swap events, and lending libraries of things, as a growing tide of responses to our throwaway culture.
“God’s creation epitomises a circular economy in which nothing is thrown away. Renewal and restoration are at the heart of our Christian faith; so it’s fitting that more and more churches are becoming places of repair and renewal, running or hosting repair cafés on their premises.”
MANY repair cafés are hosted on church premises, and some are organised by the churches themselves. At St Mary’s, Putney, the driving force behind the bustling repair café is Charlie Lindsell, a retired director of a computer company, who knows about industry waste. With a keen interest in recycling and DIY, Mr Lindsell, a member of the congregation, first broached the idea of a repair café with the Team Rector, the Revd John Whittaker, in 2022.
“I’d visited a nearby repair café,” Mr Lindsell says. “My background is in electronics recycling, and I’m very much driven by avoiding waste, reusing stuff, and restoring and repairing it. But, at first, I was in two minds as to whether it would work, because you’ve got a lot of admin to go through.
“You’ve got to find good insurance; make sure you’ve got enough volunteers. And then you’ve got to make sure there’s set-up and tear-down, and help on making coffee and signing and registering. It’s quite a lot of work, but [the Team Rector] was very supportive right from the start. And I owe him that big ‘thank you’ for encouraging me, and obviously providing the premises, which, of course, is essential.”
Since opening in 2023, the Putney repair café has gone from strength to strength; queues form on café mornings, the second Saturday of each month.
St Mary’s UptonThe sign promoting the Repair Café at St Mary’s, Upton
“The electronic appliances are the main focus,” Mr Lindsell says. “Kettles, toasters, irons, vacuum cleaners, blenders, radios, that’s the main emphasis. Then we’ve got sewing. I’ve got two or three very nice ladies who come and fix clothing and the odd handbag and woollen jumper.
“And then I’ve got one or two specialists who come along and do laptops and clocks. We also have a blade-sharpening activity, which is kitchen knives and scissors and garden shears. It’s useful for most households, really.
“We repair broken china, bric-a-brac, and the odd bit of jewellery within the two hours available, but it’s surprising what you can do. We’ve had people with shopping trolleys, which you’d think were ready for the skip, but we’ve managed to get the wheels turning again on some of them. We’ve had bicycles — a huge list!
“There was one lady who brought in the christening robes belonging to her mother, who had been christened on the day of the Queen’s Coronation in 1953. We repaired that very carefully; and there was a musical box brought in in October, which one of my volunteers repaired, got it going again, and the lady was absolutely delighted. But just sharpening somebody’s knives and fixing a bit of clothing — it brings smiles to the faces of a lot of people.”
Twelve volunteers help Mr Lindsell to run the café. Most are from outside of the church community, and there are usually about 30 people attending.
About £200 is raised per session, after expenses and other costs, including new tools; and £120 goes to the church, but the benefits are more than financial, says Mr Whittaker, who points to “a rich partnership with church members and with people not involved in church. . . We all have a common agenda around reducing wasteful throwing away, community, and supporting our neighbours, which resonates with what the church strives to be about.”
For Mr Lindsell, it also means serving the community, reducing waste, and being part of the global repair-café movement to actively encourage governments and local authorities to act.
“There’s a lot more they could do to reduce electronic waste,” he says. “It’s scandalous, these millions of tons of e-waste. Maybe half could be recycled, but of that half, half could actually be repaired.
“The problem is that appliances are now so cheap that commercially it’s unviable to repair them. The repair café can do a certain amount, but we scratch the surface. The Government should be issuing some sort of voucher, some kind of encouragement for people to take things into repair shops, to be repaired rather than thrown away. It’s a conundrum, but if you want to reduce waste, it might even pay for itself.”
MANY organisers of repair cafés have former careers linked in some way to the technical skills needed for the repairs. The founders of the repair café at St Mary’s, Upton Village, Wirral, are both electronics engineers. One of them, Mark Roberts, explained: “We’d visited a repair café a few miles away, and liked what we saw. We wrote up a visit report, and then put it to our Vicar, who thought it was good idea.
“The PCC was happy for us to be hosting it on church premises; so we started using resources of the website of the Repair Café organisation [repaircafe.org] to create our own flyers, visitor forms, etc. The original Repair Café is based in the Netherlands, and has been going for 15 years now. There’s so much helpful information about registering visitors and other things you need to consider — insurance, health and safety, vetting your volunteers.”
Mr Roberts has attended St Mary’s, Upton Village, since 1981, when he moved to the area with his family. He has been a PCC member three times, and currently serves on the fabric and property committee.
“Our very first repair café was held in September 2023. It was three hours long, which we felt was too long; so all subsequent events have been two hours. People bring a variety of items. We ask for only one item per person, and they will sit with the repairer and, hopefully, learn something so that they can perhaps try and repair items for themselves.
“On our promotional posters and social media, there is a QR code link, so that items can be pre-registered, which helps the repairers in case special tools are needed. The main motivation for us as a church is creation care: reduced landfill waste, and getting people out of the throwaway-society mindset. It’s so easy to go on Amazon and get a replacement, but, with a little bit of knowledge, sometimes things are repairable. Sometimes they’re not, and that’s fine, but equally, if it can be repaired, we’ll give it a go.
Charlie Lindsell mends a suitcase at the repair café at St Mary’s, Putney
“We’ve had a huge variety of fascinating objects come through at Upton: toys, lots of electrical equipment, jewellery, clocks, and watches. We’ve got some very talented sewers; so they’ve been repairing clothes and blankets. We also have a bicycle man.
“Unusual items include a magnetic tumbler for cleaning jewellery, and a radar gun that was used by a sports trainer to measure how fast footballs could be hit. We recently had a small harp brought in, but unfortunately it was too twisted to be repaired; so all we could provide was advice. A remote-controlled Dalek was a fun toy that was successfully fixed.”
At St Mary’s, up to 18 volunteers will deal with between 20 and 30 jobs during a typical café morning.
“There is quite a lot to think about when you’re setting one up,” Mr Roberts says. “Apart from the repairers, you also need people to be on the welcome desk. You need a floor manager, and people in the café area for teas and coffees. We need a first-aider, a fire marshal, and a health-and-safety monitor.”
Safety is key. Another consideration is insurance; the Repair Café website provides links to providers. “We do say to people, if they bring something in, and we do feel it’s a hazard, we reserve the right to cut the plug off the end if they want it back.
“We’re very fortunate in having a piece of safety equipment called a portable appliance tester. Before we even turn something on, we can verify it’s safe before we try and do any repairs. One lady was very upset with us when we said her Christmas lights were very dangerous, but we have a duty of care.
“We try and log all our jobs as well into the Repair Café organisation’s monitor website. The idea is that people all over Europe put data in, and this in turn influences manufacturers to make items more reparable, or to point out particular parts that keep failing.
“They’ve done really well in influencing manufacturers around the world to help things become more repairable, and were instrumental in the Right to Repair directive being adopted into EU law earlier this year. Apart from creation care, this is very much a community-support project. People come in sometimes just to have a coffee and a cake, and don’t actually bring anything: they just like to see what’s going on, which is lovely, because it’s a warm space.
“And people are very generous with donations in return. So, we feed that back: we’ve sponsored of couple of planters in the village for Upton in Bloom to support the Upton Village Community Group.”
The repair café team at Upton has recently been awarded a grant from the waste-management company Enfinium, and in plans are in place to purchase special “repair kits” for schools that the church is involved with.
These reusable kits have been designed by young innovators from Imperial College, London, and feature toys and gadgets with carefully planned faults that the children can find and fix.
“We’re also planning to get young people to shadow repairers at the café, and we’re very excited about that as well. It’s very much in the spirit of Repair Café to train repairers of the future.”
IF RUNNING a repair café is not a possibility, another option for churches is to host a repair café on behalf of another organisation. The repair café at St Andrew’s, in Chinnor, Oxfordshire, is run in partnership with a local group, Greening Chinnor. A PCC member, Lauretta Milligan, oversees the partnership on behalf of the church. “It’s a very new exercise for us,” she says. “Our first repair café was held in July 2024; we’ve had two since then, and we’re keen to continue.”
The partnership evolved out of the church’s existing connections with the community in Chinnor, and its relationship with Greening Chinnor, who run an orchard up the road from St Andrew’s.
Mrs Milligan says: “They approached us as they wanted to run a repair café, but couldn’t find a venue. We looked at our diary and decided to help. We provide the space, refreshments, and tables. They cover all the health-and-safety training with the volunteers, as well as PAT [portable appliance testing] testing of the electrical items. They also have their own insurance to cover any incidentals.”
As with the other churches, Greening Chinnor asks for donations in return for items fixed. “Greening Chinnor take their costs from the amount raised, and they give us a donation. It’s not particularly profitable for us as a church, but it’s so rewarding to have so many people coming through our doors.
“One of our churchwardens came in and had something repaired — his wife’s handbag, as the zip had to be replaced — and he said, ‘Oh, it’s lovely to see the church used in a different, alternative way.’ And, of course, it helps us fulfil our environmental policy. Things don’t go into landfill, and people who are bringing items in are encouraged to sit and chat to the person who’s doing the repair, and possibly learn something about how it’s being mended.
“And it’s saving people money if we can fix broken items, which is so important with our rising living costs. It’s a very social event, too: our guests can sit and have a drink and a chat for the whole two hours. There’s no pressure for them to leave.”
The sewing-machine team at St Andrew’s, Chinnor
Musical boxes, hi-vis jackets, a Strimmer, handbags, and a much-loved chair have all been fixed. There is also a demand for knife- and secateur-sharpening which will be introduced in the New Year in an allocated outside space, owing to flying sparks.
“Being involved in the community is really important for us as a congregation,” Mrs Milligan says. “The ministry team and volunteers are very involved in our local schools, and host activities with young children in the church every week. The church is the local Church of England church, and is very much the chosen place for members of the community for baptisms, weddings, and funerals.
“With the repair café, too, we are getting people through the door who don’t normally come into church. And I think that that might very well have a ripple effect. We hand our parish magazines out to people at the café who are interested in our services. We don’t know what connections will be made for the future.”
Claudia Schipper, of the Repair Café International Foundation, the organisation that runs the website repaircafe.org, told the Church Times that church-organised repair cafés were making a valued contribution.
“We welcome everyone and every team — including churches or faith-based organisations — who want to start and organise their own repair café,” she said, referring them to the organisation’s “Start Your Own Guide” on the website.
This offers support to groups who are beginning from scratch. For a one-off fee of €49, the organisation provides a digital starter kit that includes a manual, logo, poster, flyer, press-release templates, registration forms, and information on statutory compliance and other matters.
In return for this support, the organisation states under its “Fine Print” section that repair cafés must be run on a voluntary and non-commercial basis, and must be called Repair Café, using the relevant logos and website.
Ms Schipper said: “I can imagine that — apart from common sense and reasons they have in common with other repair café groups — parishes share taking good care of the creation as a common motivation to organise a repair café.”
Fr Whittaker explains the value of repair cafés for his community at St Mary’s, Putney: “As a church, we try to follow the ways of God’s Kingdom. And one aspect of that is care for creation. We’re so conscious of the complete throwaway culture, and that just doesn’t seem very caring of God’s world entrusted into our stewardship.
“So, when this possibility came about to use our church building, which is such a tremendous gift we’ve received, and we want to use it well, to actually challenge that throwaway culture, get things restored, and avoid new things being built, that’s right at the core of what the mission of the church is.
“We’ve seen a fantastic community being built up around the café. The value for the church is about making connections and helping to contribute social capital to community groups.
“And, lastly, some people who can’t afford repairs, either they make a tiny little donation, or they get it free of charge. That’s part and parcel of us noticing where there’s need, and doing our part to meet it.”
The Repair Café’s “Start Your Own Guide” is at: repaircafe.org