The Repair Café March 2025

Hungerford Repair Café opened its doors to the public again on Saturday 15th March in the Croft Hall in Hungerford. As the Croft Hall has been having its own repairs and improvements, we had to run the café without a kitchen. We are very grateful to Costa Coffee in Hungerford who gave us free paper coffee cups as we had no washing-up facilities. They even took back the used cups for recycling. Thank you, Costa Coffee.

At this event, of 61 items brought in for our volunteers to help mend, we had to declare 15 of them as “beyond economic repair”. Sadly, this represents about 37 Kg of products that we failed to save from being thrown away. Increasingly, modern products for the home rely on small electronic circuits, without which the product is completely useless. One example of this was a portable oven which would not turn on because a small electronic circuit had failed. We were able to determine that the oven itself, including the heating element were fine, but without the electronics, the controls would not operate the oven. Looking on-line, we could not find any spare parts for this oven, and the seller could not offer a repair service. Being a large item, this represented almost half of the 37 Kg destined for the skip.

What a shame! Our volunteers are dedicated to avoiding unnecessary waste, and it is frustrating when we are unable help. UK and EU legislation is attempting to force manufacturers to provide repair information and spare parts under what is known as the “Right to Repair” law. Unfortunately, there is a long way to go before legislation is comprehensive enough to apply to everything we buy. The law currently only applies to certain home appliances and TVs. Manufacturers are only compelled to provide spares and information to professional repair services and repairs are often more expensive that a new product.

The good news is that we did manage to rescue the other 46 items brought in. For example, the jewellery box pictured was covered with many intricately shaped mother-of-pearl pieces, some of which had fallen off. Our volunteer painstakingly glued the saved pieces back in the right places – rather like completing a jigsaw puzzle. Well done, John.

Our next event is scheduled to take place at 10:00 am – 12:30 pm on May 17th in a newly refurbished Croft Hall in Hungerford.