In an old, recycled shipping container, located in ‘Det Blå Kvarter’ in Odense, the volunteer-run community Repair Café has its operations. Consider it the antidote to the ‘throwaway-society’ – Here you bring a broken item and learn how to fix it.
electrical and electronic items discarded as waste are functional or repairable. This, of course, can be extended to other types of waste, such as clothing, textiles, toys, furniture etc. One of the main problems is the difficulty to find a place to repair your item for a competitive price, compared to buying a new product. In addition, we tend to neglect the fact that we are able to repair our own items and then we lose the knowledge on how to do it. Thus, our motivation starts from the fact that we can create a more sustainable life-style, mainly applied to our own small-scale society, educate people on how to repair and contribute positively to the environment by producing smaller amounts of waste and decrease the demand for new items.
What’s the history of Repair Café? Repair Café, as a concept, started in the Netherlands in 2007 by Martine Postma who has been striving for sustainability at a local level in many ways. Martine organized the very first Repair Café in Amsterdam in 2009. Repair Café Odense started in 2016 by Keshav Parajuly and friends seeking to make a change in our ‘throw-away-culture’ and introduce to the local community to a more sustainable and circular way of thinking. What motivated you to follow the idea? We, as consumers, produce vast amounts of waste. Through experiments run in the University of Southern Denmark and as a part of Keshav’s PhD research, we found that a large share – approximately 9-23%, depending on the product type, of the
What do you wish to achieve with this project? Our first goal is to contribute positively to the environment. This can be done by decreasing the amount of waste produced and keeping the products and resources recirculated in the user phase. Our second goal is to contribute to the economy, and specifically to circular economy. Reuse and therefore resale of second hand products can increase the revenue produced by one item, without consuming more resources and energy. On top of that, the right and ability to repair gives to the citizens the option of either they want to buy a new item, repair or resale their existing one, fact that does not apply for all products currently. Finally, we want to create and support our local community. Our activities are addressed to the city of Odense
and we want to have a motivating and inspiring impact on our neighborhoods and city. How can people contribute to the project? There are many different ways to contribute to our project. First of all, you can be a volunteer in Repair Café Odense. It is not necessary to have any knowledge to start, you just need willingness to learn and help your community. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram, like and share our events and videos and donate on our webpage repaircafeodense.org. You can start your own Repair Café in your city or neighbourhood.
Repair Café Denmark is an umbrella organisation, and can as well as Repair Café Odense provide any help required to make the start. You can reduce your consumption, buy more high quality and repairable items, repair your own stuff, customise and upcycle yourself. There are numerous videos, websites and tutorials that can inspire you on what to do with the item of interest. The most important is to strive for creativity!
Thank you, Repair Café Odense! Want to learn more about circular economy and how to engage yourself in sustainable living? Find more information about Repair Cafés in Denmark here.