● practice● Scaled
Repair Café
Scale
local
subnational
national
systemic
Description
Free community gatherings where volunteers with technical know-how help neighbours repair broken items (clothing, appliances, bicycles, toys, furniture) instead of throwing them away. Born in Amsterdam in 2009 during the financial recession, the model combines waste reduction, preservation of repair knowledge and neighbourhood social cohesion. Stichting Repair Café International supports the network: in the Netherlands there are about 700 cafés repairing around 150.000 items a year, and the movement operates in some 50 countries with several thousand cafés in total.