Waste is one of the biggest problems we’re facing today – things we buy break, can’t be easily fixed, and end up going to landfill, meaning we lose valuable resources and our landfills grow. But if we could fix some of these things beforehand, we could help make things better.

Darebin Repair Cafe, part of the international Repair Cafe movement, aims to help fix this situation by, well, fixing things. We’ve been running a cafe the third Sunday of every other month since mid-2018 (with people repairing at home during COVID). We recruit fixers and other volunteers, and people bring their items to be fixed, hopefully learning how to fix them themselves in the process. Repairs are free, but we do ask that you be patient, book in in advance, and understand that we sadly can’t fix everything.

As a note, we saved over 300 kg of items from going to landfill in our first year of operation, with more happening all the time.