Sustainable Warwickshire

‘Reuse it, don’t lose it!’ is the message from the Kenilworth Repair Café which will grow thanks to Green Shoots Community Climate Change Funding.

The Green Shoots funding will enable a Repair Café for the Kenilworth area to grow, providing a focal point for items to be repaired and reused. The café will meet on the third Saturday afternoon of every month at the United Reformed Church in Kenilworth. Here, personal and portable items can be brought for repair, to extend their useful life and avoid them entering the waste system and potentially landfill.

Monthly repair cafes have previously been held in Leamington Spa, Rugby and Coventry and the Kenilworth Repair Café will be held on a different Saturday to complement these cafes so that repair facilities are available across Warwickshire every week and form part of a network for Coventry and Warwickshire.

All sorts of items can be brought in ranging from clothes and accessories needing a stitch or simple repair to furniture and homeware to toys and electrical/electronic items that perhaps need a more technical approach.

Repair Cafes are part of an International movement and the Kenilworth Repair Café will support and reflect these objectives and ethos. Information gained from Repair Cafes around the country has shown that 80% of repairs involve electronic or electrical goods, that would otherwise be discarded of replaced.

The core aims of the Kenilworth Repair Café are:

• To increase the adaptability and resilience of Kenilworth to climate change by reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill in particular electrical items which are currently hard to recycle.
• To provide a service to the whole community of Kenilworth and surrounding areas regardless of wealth;
• Help foster an awareness of environmental issues by creating a repair culture rather than that of discard and replace;
• Help give residents the skills to repair items on their own in the future; and
• Provide important volunteering opportunities to support the work of the café.

Look out for Repair Café dates listed on our events page.

More information about the repair café network.