Company repair cafés and how to repair for a sustainable future ?

In Luxembourg, the most popular items are domestic appliances (coffee machines, vacuum cleaners, food processors), then everyday objects such as lamps, bikes, fabrics and tools. They're objects used every day and sometimes visitors bring objects that don't work anymore but they've kept them at the bottom of their drawers for several years. Around 60% of the objects people bring in are repaired and then go on to have a second life!

At the moment we haven't seen any difference between objects repaired in a company or public repair café.

Worldwide, repaircafe.org provides more information on the main objects repaired in 2020, 2021 and 2022

We advise anyone interested to look at the schedule for upcoming repair cafés on repaircafe.lu or on the Facebook page (facebook.com/www.repaircafe.lu). You don't need to register to come to a repair café.

Repair cafés wouldn't exist without volunteers, so you can also complete the form on repaircafe.lu if you'd like to contribute either as a repairer or to the organisation and smooth running of the event.

We've gone from four repair cafés in 2021 to 35 in 2022 and in 2023 we're already at 53 in September. The number of sessions is rising quickly thanks to efforts by towns.

As far as the objects brought in, there will soon have been 2.000 since repair cafés started in Luxembourg ten years ago and the 1.000 repairs barrier was passed this spring. Lastly, we have around 300 repairers and volunteers already involved.

There are still lots of challenges:

• ensure the longevity of the existing four repair cafés,
• help to set them up in the towns that don't have one yet,
• bolster the volunteer momentum,
• find new repairers,
• and more generally, advocate repairs.