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On the second Saturday of every month, the old library on Mill Street in the town of Ashford Vale becomes a busy workshop. People arrive carrying broken toasters, torn jackets, bicycles with flat tyres and lamps that no longer work. They are visitors to the town's new repair café, where volunteers fix things for free.
The idea came from Rosa Klein, a 64-year-old retired engineer. "When I moved here two years ago, I was shocked by how much people threw away," she says. "My neighbour put a perfectly good radio in the rubbish because one small wire was loose. It took me five minutes to fix it." Rosa asked friends at her walking club if they would help, and seven of them agreed. Now the café has more than twenty volunteers, including a tailor, two electricians and a teenager who repairs mobile phones.
The rules are simple. Visitors sit next to the volunteer while the repair is done, so they can learn how to do it themselves next time. Repairs are free, but most people leave a small donation, which pays for tools and spare parts. Coffee and homemade cakes are also sold at the door.
In its first year, the café repaired almost 900 items. Bicycles and small kitchen machines were the most common, followed by clothes. Not every repair works: about one item in five cannot be saved, usually because spare parts are no longer made.
The town council is pleased. It says that the amount of electrical rubbish collected in Ashford Vale fell by about 10 percent last year, although it admits that the café is probably not the only reason.
For Rosa, the café is about more than saving money or reducing waste. "People come in feeling annoyed with a broken machine and leave chatting with someone they didn't know an hour before," she says. "We are fixing friendships as well as kettles."