Rethink waste with a trip to a local repair café!
Published Wednesday 23 October 2024
As part of a big drive to rethink waste, residents are encouraged to check out the range of repair cafés, libraries of things, community larders, clothes swaps and other great reuse initiatives happening in their local area.
With reduce and reuse top of the agenda, last weekend, representatives from South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils popped along to check out the great work happening at two local initiatives.
In South, Cllr David Rouane, Council Leader and Cabinet Member for Climate Action, visited Sustainable Didcot’s Repair Café, which runs on the third Saturday of every month, 2pm to 5pm in The Green Hub in the SOHA building.
The friendly repair café, run entirely by dedicated volunteers, will try their best to fix broken household items for free, ranging from repairs of household electrical items (including computers), broken toys, clocks and watches, sharpening blunt knives – even sprucing up old bicycles. They are particularly interested in repairing electrical items and they will PAT test them to make sure they are safe.
Cllr Rouane took along a faulty iron and was incredibly impressed by the warm welcome he received, as well as the handy fix on his iron. He said: “The Sustainable Didcot Repair Café is a wonderful place. I’m delighted to have my iron fixed. I’d urge everyone to rethink what they throw out – is there life in it yet? Can it be fixed with a little TLC? Not only will this help save the planet you’ll save yourself a few pounds by not having to buy new. Visit the Didcot Repair Café or find one near you.”
Di Chesterman, Chair of Sustainable Didcot, said: “We’re running these repair cafes once a month on the third Saturday of the month from 2 till 5. We usually fix about 50 to 80 objects at every repair cafe that we do and we have a fix rate of about 76 per cent. So – we’re keeping a huge amount of weight out of the rubbish and giving new life to lots and lots of objects!”
View a video of David’s visit with Sustainable Didcot here.
In Vale, Cllr Mark Coleman, Cabinet Member for Environmental Services and Waste, went to Sustainable Wantage’s Clothes Swap at Wantage Methodist Church Hall. To take part in the swap – which also includes toys and books – people just need to bring with them at least one clean and presentable item to swap. People can take away as many items as they bring in, extras can be taken for a donation. Any items leftover are donated or recycled.
Cllr Coleman brought along a selection of books and a jumper and swapped for some new reads. He said: “This just goes to show – you don’t need to spend a fortune on the high street to update your wardrobe or your bookshelf! I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to the clothes and book swap – I’d encourage everyone to take a look at the amazing range of initiatives run by Sustainable Wantage – like this clothes swap event, or their regular Repair Café – or look out a sustainable initiative near you.”
“Did you know there are more than 3,000 repair cafes across the world now with around 50,000 volunteers and 50,000 items repaired each month! The movement started about 15 years ago – and I’m delighted to say a new repair café was recently announced in Appleton thanks to our Climate Action Fund.”
The Community Action Group, Sustainable Wantage, run a huge range of initiatives – including a repair café on the first Saturday of each month between 10am– 1pm at The Mix, a ‘Library of Things’ – where you can borrow a huge range of items such as a sewing machine or a pasta maker, and a community fridge to share surplus food.
Jo Harvey from Sustainable Wantage, said: “Sustainable Wantage offers a whole host of different projects – from looking after our green spaces to helping people reuse and repair stuff so that things don’t go to waste.
“We have repair cafes, we have a refill station down at our hub – The Mix, and a library of things, where people can borrow something rather than having to own their own. If you only use it once a year – a pressure washer, for example, you could just borrow it when you need it. We’re really aiming for people to be able to reduce what they spend and less stuff being needed to be made.”
View a video of Cllr Mark Coleman’s visit to the Sustainable Wantage Clothes Swap here.
People can find their nearest repair café and a range of other reuse initiatives by searching on the CAG Oxfordshire website: www.cagoxfordshire.org.uk or visit the Repair Café Oxfordshire websitehttps://repaircafeoxfordshire.org
Rethinking waste
Both of the councils have approved a new joint Waste Resources and Street Cleansing strategy. People can view the strategy and find out more about rethinking waste and our plans to keep our streets clean and tidy at: www.southandvale.gov.uk/rethinkingwaste
Residents in the districts have consistently been among the very best recyclers in England for well over a decade. The two councils are now striving to take things to the next level and are encouraging everyone to rethink their approach to waste.
A key part of the new strategy is to encourage and enable people to reduce, reuse, repair, refill and rehome items, instead of throwing them away.
Cllr Sam James-Lawrie, South Oxfordshire District Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment, said: “We’ve developed a strategy for how we can rethink waste – to help us all do more to protect our environment and keep it clean for ourselves and future generations. This is a total community effort, which needs councils, residents, visitors and businesses to all play a part. We are harking back to the make do and mend ethos so admirably embraced by our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. If you’d like to find out more, come along to the Eco Fair on 2 November at Cornerstone in Didcot where the councils’ waste team will have a stand.”
Cllr Mark Coleman said of the strategy: “We are looking to the future and our wider waste strategy to take us into the years to come. As well as doing our bit to improve our service, we want to encourage and enable people to reuse, repair, refill and rehome items, instead of throwing them away. Together we can make the most of what we already have.
“We all need to maximise the lifespan we get from our goods and where items have to be disposed of, we look and see if the item can be collected under the comprehensive recycling collection service, rather than simply throwing it in the refuse bin.”
Representatives from the councils will be at the Eco Fair at Cornerstone on 2 November 2024, with the opportunity to chat about rethinking waste.
