On a quiet suburban street in Melbourne’s north, a small but steady stream of people are welcomed into the Mernda Community House. Each carries bags of broken belongings: a torn hoodie, worn-out shoes, a faulty computer charger. But instead of heading for landfill, these items are getting a second chance.

The Mernda Repair Café is a free monthly initiative run by the community house. It’s part of a growing movement encouraging people to fix what they already own rather than throw it away. Paras Christou, the program’s primary organiser, says that in an era dominated by consumerism and disposable goods, the idea is simple: repair, reuse, rethink.

“The goal is to reduce waste,” she tells upstart. “Waste is an ongoing problem in not only our local community but throughout the world.”

The café, which launched in April 2022, was the first of its kind in the City of Whittlesea. However, similar initiatives have appeared across Victoria, from Greensborough and Eltham to inner-city suburbs like Brunswick and Richmond. Together, they form part of an international repair café movement focused on reducing waste and promoting what Christou calls a “circular” approach to consumption. By that, she means keeping items in use for as long as possible.

“The aim is to give things a second life, so that we are not contributing to or not sending things to landfill,” she says.

Inside the café, that aim is demonstrated in practical ways. Volunteers with decades of experience are situated at workstations, ready to assess whatever comes through the door. Kim Kocijan, who has been volunteering for the past year, has been sewing for most of her life.

“My mother bought me a sewing machine for my ninth birthday,” she tells upstart. “So that’s how long I’ve been sewing, a long time, 60 years.”

On a typical day, she might fix anything from a small tear to more complicated alterations. But her motivations are straightforward: “to keep stuff out of the landfill.”

That mission has become increasingly urgent as textile waste continues to grow worldwide. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned every second globally.

The cause of waste is not just environmental, but cultural. The rise of consumerism has reshaped how people think about items, making repair seem unnecessary or even inconvenient. And many simply just don’t know how. Melissa Pain first came to the café with a nearly new hoodie riddled with small holes.

“I don’t quite have the skills to fix it,” she tells upstart.

It’s Pain’s second visit. The first time, she brought in a skirt for repair. Now, she follows the community pages to keep track of when the café is running.

Another barrier to getting household objects fixed is cost. Unlike commercial repair services, which can sometimes cost more than replacing an item, the Mernda Repair Café is entirely free.

“We understand that where the cost of repairing at another service may be greater than the cost of the item, people are not going to want to fix things,” Christou says.

Repair cafés have grown into a worldwide movement, with more than 3,900 operating globally and an estimated 58,000 volunteers involved. Together, they repair around 70,000 items per month. The concept began in 2009, when Dutch environmentalist Martine Postma organised the first repair café in Amsterdam. With the aim to bring people together in a shared space where broken items could be fixed for free, while also passing on practical skills.

What started as a local experiment quickly gained traction, leading Postma to establish the Repair Café International Foundation in 2011. The organisation now supports communities around the world to set up their own cafés, providing guidance, resources and a framework for running volunteer-led repair events. But the model offers more than just repairs, it’s also a space for skill-sharing and learning.

Lisa Edwards, a volunteer at Mernda Repair Cafe for over three years, thinks skill-sharing is just as important as the fixes themselves.

“It’s amazing what can be fixed, but people just don’t think about it,” she tells upstart. “You could do this yourself.”

For Baldev Gill, an electronics repairer who studied electrical engineering in India, the appeal lies in helping others.

“[People] bring all the broken things and they need to throw them in the bin if they aren’t repaired,” he tells upstart. “We try to help them to fix the problem and they can keep using it.”

As the movement expands, it highlights a growing appeal for more sustainable ways of living and a recognition that small, local actions can contribute to a much larger change. Still, measuring its impact is not easy. While the café has received recognition, including a Neighbourhood Houses Victoria Climate Action Award, most evidence of their effectiveness remains anecdotal.

“We see people who come to the service walk away with big smiles on their faces because they have been able to have their item repaired,” Christou says.

Every repaired item is weighed and recorded, contributing to an annual tally of how much waste has been diverted from landfill by their organisation. But whether that translates into long-term behavioural change is harder to quantify as it requires evaluation programs that these initiatives can’t afford to run.

There are also practical limitations. The café relies entirely on volunteers, and repairs are constrained by available skills and equipment. Some items, particularly those with complex electronic components or non-replaceable plastic parts, realistically cannot be fixed.

This points to a larger, systemic challenge. While initiatives like the Mernda Repair Café can reduce waste at a local level, they operate within a global economy that still prioritises mass production and disposability. Christou believes broader change is needed, including support for the ‘Right to Repair’ movement, which advocates for legislation requiring manufacturers to make products more repairable.

Back at the café, the focus remains on what can be done now. One repair at a time. The impact may be small, but it feels meaningful.

“Lots of different things come in to be fixed,” Kocijan says. “Sometimes we’ve all got to look at things together and see what we can do.”

Article: Milla Webster is a third-year Media and Communications (Journalism major) student at La Trobe University. You can follow her on Twitter @webster_milla.

Cover photo: Mernda Community House building. This photo has not been modified.