Repair Café: Autumn Edition

Repair Café: Autumn Edition
Don't throw it away, Fix it!

In a collaborative effort to reduce waste and get the community together, Friends of the Earth Malta, the Valletta Design Cluster (within the Valletta Cultural Agency), Zibel and Electro Waste Malta have joined forces to host a Repair Café on Saturday 23rd November from 9:00-13:00, at the San Gorg Preca Primary School, in Valletta (entrance from North Street).

A Repair Café is a meeting place where the community comes together—people who have damaged objects meet others who know how to carry out repairs, and will try to help fix their items. The repairs are done by volunteers for free with the concept of supporting each other and giving back to the community, following solidarity economy principles.

The public is invited to attend the Repair Café: Autumn Edition, and encouraged to bring along small objects they want to fix, or come to learn how to easily repair different items. A number of repair stations will be on site including:

+ clothing repair (eg. torn trousers, jackets, dresses etc.)
+ woodwork station (**subject to good weather conditions** small wooden objects eg. jewelry boxes, folding chairs–no bulky furniture)
+ toy fixes (eg. small electronic toys)
+ up-cycling (small objects that can be repurposed)
+ small household appliances repair (eg. toaster, blender, small fan–no bulky objects)
+ phone and laptop diagnostics.

There will also be bins for electrical waste provided by Electro Waste Malta, so that the public can come and dispose of any small appliances or electronics that they have at home, that have reached their end of life and can have some of their components recycled.

The repairs are done for free and all that can be fixed will be fixed; in the case were repairs cannot be performed, the issue with the object will be diagnosed. This can be the case for some modern-day appliances that are intentionally designed by companies to be thrown away and not repaired.

The first Repair Café was conceived in Amsterdam, after which thousands of similar setups have cropped up all over the world since then, fighting the throwaway culture, one repair at a time. It is sometimes nostalgic to think of the good old days when people were quite handy and could fix any issue in their households; but let’s face it, we will not be able to know how to repair everything, and maybe our friends or relatives cannot help us with all the necessary fixes either. That is why a Repair Café is a perfect informal place where exchanges can take place, a space where we can help each other!