Verified · Jan 20251 min read
● projectScaled · systemic · 2009
Repair Café
Free community gatherings where volunteers with technical know-how help neighbours repair broken items (clothing, appliances, bicycles, toys, furniture) instead of throwing them away.
illustrative atlas image · Md.Omar Faruk Hemal / Pexels01 The context
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.
02 How it works
03 What it stands on
Evidence level
Own experience
Grounded in published theory
Documented evidence elsewhere
Independently evaluated here
Peer-reviewed research documents this project: the strongest evidence level in the atlas.
The evidence 1 ›
EvidenceA Critical Review of the Role of Repair Cafés in a Sustainable Circular TransitionSustainability (MDPI), vol. 13, núm. 22, art. 12351; DOI 10.3390/su132212351; autores Rikke Marie Moalem y Mette Alberg Mosgaard · 2021