Portsmouth celebrates International Repair Day

It was a packed session in Milton this Saturday, with volunteers helping visitors try to fix electrical, wooden and jewellery items, along with knife and tool sharpening. The group runs pop-up sessions around the city on the 3rd Saturday of each month but is now also part of Share (Portsmouth), a local charity that has a Hub in Cascades Shopping centre that offers Repair Café slots 4 days a week.

The Repair Café concept started in Amsterdam 15 years ago last Friday, and to celebrate Portsmouth Repair Café ran a competition to design an anniversary cake. The winning entry was a combination of designs from Bev Muir, who has been a volunteer since the Portsmouth group’s inception six and a half years ago, and Orquidea Yazmin’s (age 5) design which involved a colourful montage of feathers and pompoms. The cake was made by Mary Eastman of Mary’s Fairies, who had previously had a cake steamer repaired at a Repair Café session and was delighted to be involved in the celebrations.

Repair Cafés have been growing across the world since their beginnings in the Netherlands and can now be found on every continent. Portsmouth is one of over 600 in the UK, and a recent study showed that UK community repair groups completed almost 55,000 repairs last year, preventing 150 tonnes of e-waste and 1000 tonnes of CO2e emissions. People can find their closest at https://communityrepairnetwork.org.uk/find.

International Repair Day celebrates the power of community repair to prevent waste and learn skills together and this year had a focus of ‘Repair for Everyone’ which founder of Portsmouth Repair Café, Clare Seek, explained is still a long way from reality. “Portsmouth residents are continually telling us that they want to be able to fix their broken items, but as our data shows, there are some real barriers to repairing that we need help to overcome. The recent ORA report shows that 25% of items couldn’t be repaired due to a lack of available spare parts and a further 18% where parts were available, but the cost was prohibitive. This Repair Day we’ve been asking residents across the South to contact their MP to ask them to support the UK Repair Declaration which calls for measures to make repair easier for everyone. Portsmouth South’s, Stephen Morgan MP and Caroline Dinenage MP for Gosport have pledged their support, but we’d like to see all our local MPs endorsing it.”

The Repair Declaration calls for measures to make repair easier for everyone by: making repair more affordable; expanding our Right to Repair regulations; helping the public choose more repairable products; supporting repair training and apprenticeships; and prioritising reuse when waste is processed. The Repair Declaration can be signed at repairreusedeclaration.uk

Whilst the volunteer team waits on Government to make it easier to repair, they continue to help where they can, and are exploring workarounds on some items, for example 3D printing an elusive part, as well as enjoying sharing their skills with others and eating cake. And those that visit with items are very grateful for the help that they receive. This Saturday, Lisa Fryer brought along a dining chair with a wobbly leg and was helped by volunteer Chris. Lisa said “They made me very welcome and helped me fix my chair. It’s a fantastic initiative run by volunteers, helping to reduce waste. The Repair Cafe have so many fantastic initiatives going on, I definitely recommend checking them out.”

If you’d like the team’s help for a broken item, you can find out more at www.shareportsmouth.org.uk/repair