Repair Cafe

Focus: Extending the life of household items and appliances through repair.​

Background: A not-for-profit community initiative launched in Bega in 2019, where community volunteers offer a repair service on broken household items and appliances for Bega Valley residents.​

Circular innovation: The Repair Café challenges ‘normal’ consumer driven behaviour in our current throw-away society by finding ways to extend the use of material goods, often through sourcing spare parts that are either hard-to-find or no-longer commercially available.​

Volunteers have provided repair services to family heirloom sewing machines, new motor parts to Dyson vacuums and even corrected the upside-down display on a LG TV.​

As well as finding ways to extend the lifecycle of products, they also provide opportunities for social connection where people can learn new skills in how to repair everyday products from other community members.​

Impact and future development: Whilst regenerating social systems and helping shift consumer thinking, the Repair Café contributes to the diversion of waste from landfill and encourages a repair and re-use culture.​

Successfully transitioning to a circular economy in the Bega Valley will mean services like the Repair Café expanding and significantly increasing their capacity, operation and community connections – and for the repair and reuse skills they possess to be both strengthened and passed on to the next generation.​

For more information: www.facebook.com/BegaRepairCafe. ​