Stitch by stitch, with a touch of glue and a little rewiring, the Hawker Repair Café is saving once-loved items from going to landfill. It isn’t just goods being restored; the project also helps to restore community connection.

On the grounds of Softball ACT, community members come together to share their skills, knowledge, and time. The Hawker Repair Café was first introduced as a concept by one of the administrators of the local Buy Nothing Facebook page with the purpose of preventing salvageable items from adding to the ever-growing piles of landfill. 

Currently operating once a quarter, organisers hope that with enough momentum, the fix-it days could become a weekly occurrence. Jon Wells, president of the Hawker Men’s Shed, said they have hosted six events so far, and have saved more than 250 items from being sent to the garbage tip.

The Repair Café is run entirely by volunteers, who spend the day fixing a range of household and garden items. Community members take time to repair clothing by sewing on zippers and buttons, to restore knives and garden tools by sharpening them, and to give new life to loved toys or ceramics with careful gluing.

“The people who are involved on the day, our repairers, are all mainly certified, especially in the electronics area,” Mr Wells said. Some of the people who help with lawn mowers and bikes have been mechanics or tinkers for years.

For just a gold coin donation, anyone can bring their items along to be repaired. However, most of the items being restored do not require major fixes. The Repair Café does not aim to take business away from professionals, but rather to share knowledge on how owners can do those simple fixes themselves.

“If it’s a major fix, we recommend the appropriate people in the commercial world,” Mr Wells said. “It’s not designed to take [jobs away] from them, because most people would not take [items] to them in the first place, they are going to chuck [them] out – and that’s what we are trying to stop.”

ACT Greens MLA Jo Clay showed her support for the initiative, saying she would love to see more communities holding repair cafés across the Territory. Not only do they prevent items from going into landfill, she explained, but they speak to a generational divide, helping us regain lost skills.

“You hear it over and over that the way our grandparents did things was different. I think movements like this are showing us that is actually quite easy to go back to the way our grandparents did things. It’s cheaper, it’s better for the environment, and it’s actually really fun to learn those skills or to appreciate someone who has them.”

She was impressed with the electronic repairs section, where one woman brought her chainsaw in to be seen to. Ms Clay said it was a great reminder that we can fix electronics rather than disposing of them. That is what the Greens are working towards with their support for the Right to Repair movement.

“The Greens are working pretty hard on Right to Repair and the circular economy, but it’s quite hard,” Ms Clay said.

“For a lot of things, we need national solutions. Some of the things need original design; we need to work with manufacturers. It’s all these big problems. It’s really good, then, to look at the things we can affect right now.”

Ms Clay smiles as she says she isn’t terribly talented in the repairs department; her place would be on a crafts table with a hot glue gun.

To find out when the next Hawker Repair Café will be held, visit facebook.com/Hawker-Community-Repair-Cafe

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