Toss it? No Way? Celebrating Two Years of Fixing in The Gap.

The third Saturday in March marks the second anniversary of Repair Café The Gap – a monthly pop-up workshop staffed by volunteers, who are keen to help our community save money, save the environment and learn new skills. Each month, people bring along their broken household items, ranging from the practical to the precious, in the hope that our skilled repairers can help give them another chance at life.

In two years, 574 community members have brought in 695 items to repair! Of these, 56% have been electrical or electronic, with lamps, kitchen mixers and coffee machines being the most common suspects. 11% were textiles, where trousers and handbags featured strongly. The sharpening of knives, scissors and gardening tools was in high demand, representing 9% of repairs. The balance comprised furniture, mowers, bikes, toys, and anything that could be carried in! The most common item overall was clocks, which were often very sentimental possessions, passed down the generations.

Repairing an item, instead of discarding and replacing it, has a hugely positive environmental impact. We weigh each item that is diverted from ending up in landfill, and the combined weight over the two years is about 1500kg. According to a calculator developed in the UK, this has saved 13.28 tonnes of CO2 emissions, or the equivalent of driving a car over 88,000km!

We are very grateful to have a wonderful team of skilled and dedicated volunteers – the repairers, kitchen crew, triage team, repair assistants, our photographer, the front-desk folks and the coordinating team all work together to bring you this free service.

Thank you to The Gap community for embracing this concept! If you’d like to know more about attending or volunteering, please visit  www.facebook.com/repaircafethegap, or email thegaprepaircafe@gmail.com