In 2017, Repair Cafés in the entire world have saved approximately 300.000 products from the waste heap together. That is about the same as the weight of a double-decker train with twelve carriages! This is stated in the annual report of Repair Café International for 2017.
Around the world, 50,000 people go to a Repair Café every month. There they receive help from more than 21,000 volunteers. Due to the efforts of all these people, around 300,000 kilos of CO2 emissions were prevented in 2017.
250 Repair Cafés more
The Repair Café network is still growing. In 2017 the number of locations where repairs are made regularly, rose by 250. Growth was strongest in France. The number of Repair Cafés there increased by 47, to 177. France is now the fourth Repair Café country. Only the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium count more Repair Cafés.
According to Dutch Railways, one carriage of a double-decker weighs 26,000 kilos empty. A double-decker with twelve carriages therefore weighs 312,000 kilos.
Want to know more about the activities of Repair Café International in 2017? Read the annual report (in Dutch).
I live in Mesa, AZ. I saw the information about Repair Cafe in the AARP news letter. Are there any people in this area that have expressed an interest in starting a Repair Cafe?
Not yet, as far as we remember. So, be a pioneer! Our starter kit will help you creating the first Repair Café of Arizona!
Earlier in 2016 TRAID partnered with Waltham Forest Council to launch a monthly repair cafe in Leytonstone in East London alongside electrical repairers the Restart Project , Dr Bike and local furniture upcycler Shed Homewares. Since launching TRAID have helped save 40 items of clothing from being wasted and supported 27 people to learn the skills to continue to fix their clothes outside of the Repair Cafe space. The most common reason for coming to the repair cafe was to learn new skills, save money and to prolong the life of their clothes. The most common mends are holes that need patching or darning, followed by seams that have come undone or split closely followed by alterations to resize an item of clothing.