Repair hubs and cafes community circular economy guide

Repair cafes (also called ‘repair hubs or ‘repair corners’) are places where experts help to keep broken household items out of landfill by:

• repairing
• teaching repair skills
• providing shared tools.

Repair hubs and cafes give community members an opportunity to assess whether their items can be fixed by the experts or by themselves.

It is important to consider all of the following steps on your path to success. For repair hubs and cafes, we have highlighted several key capabilities that are worth further consideration, as they may provide more challenges and opportunities along the way.

Phase one: Scoping and Planning

Establish a baseline community need

Learn about the landscape in which you will be operating by understanding your volunteers, customers and repairers in your target area. Find out about their repair knowledge, buy-in to circular economy ideals, and attitudes and behaviours to repairing and consuming.

You will be in a better position to design well attended events if you understand your customers’ ability to make their own repairs, as well as your volunteer repairers’ skills to make repairs and teach repairing methods.

Plan your program

With a clear understanding of your landscape, you can think about what kind of activities you might want to run.

Articulating what drives you will also help connect others to your vision. Then you can think about the activities that will help you achieve it.

You might do some or all of these activities that other hubs/cafes do:

• Pop up repair events
• Regular repair hub/cafe sessions
• Online repair discussions
• Tool sharing
• Education and advocacy about repairing, for example pop-up workshops on the use and repair of sewing machines.

Some repair cafes are also working collectively to support changes to Fair Trading legislation across the various states through the Australian Repair Network.

Understand your capacity

To help understand your capacity, you can factor in the equipment and facilities that you can access, and your location. Think about what sort of event would best work for your organisation’s capacity and the community’s need.

Whether you’re considering pop up or regular activities, take into account:

• availability of repairers – without them you can’t start anything else
• space that is usable, secure and accessible to the community
• the cost of the venue. It is preferable to find one that is free and also has space to run repair stations and store tools
• the preferences of your local demographics
• demand and need for specific types of repair
• regulatory obligations such as testing and tagging, and the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) requirements.

Manage risk and maintain Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs)

Assess your risks

Understand the risk profile of your intended activities and take steps to mitigate risk through appropriate:

• insurance
• disclaimers
• management processes, such as volunteer induction and repairer registration.

You may find insurance cover directly or through your Neighbourhood House partner.

Inform yourself about the required safety standards when repairing items like toys and electronics. The legal consequences of a failed repair could be highly expensive which is why most repair hubs/cafes have insurance to cover their work. You may or may not be insured to fix small electrical goods, or you may only be able to fix electricals if someone has been trained to test and tag the repaired appliance for electrical safety. So before you set up your space, determine if you will have the equipment and people to do this. Often visitors agree to accept the risk by signing a document called a disclaimer, so it is worth taking legal advice about when you’re setting up your program.

Understand your agreements

MOUs are the agreements you have with your key partners such as venues and volunteers. They are useful in establishing clarity around everyone’s roles and responsibilities to help you minimise risk and build productive partnerships.

While some repair hubs/cafes are programs within a Neighbourhood House, others are run by a separate community group that has an MOU with the Neighbourhood House. The MOU sets out, among other things, when and where the events will occur, what equipment can be used, and how to brand promotional material and communications.

To ensure compliance, make sure repair hub/cafe staff and their coordinators are aware of any arrangements relating to their facilities, tools and equipment.

Design activities to change behaviours

Repair hubs/cafes encourage behaviour change around waste, so it helps to think about how all aspects of your events’ activities contribute to this goal. This could include:

• teaching people to repair and maintain the life of their items. For example, the repairer can talk the visitor through what they are doing. The fixer can even get the visitor to do parts of the repair while they supervise and advise
• encouraging visitors to dispose of items that can't be repaired appropriately – you could have a poster of where they can locally dispose of the item (it would need to be regularly updated)
• changing purchasing behaviour to buy second hand not new and cheap
• using education resources to promote the above – for example, workshops and posters.

Use your events to further educate people on the circular economy. Simply encouraging conversation is valuable. Use case cases to demonstrate and explain what a circular economy looks like as part of day-to-day business. This storytelling activity can help to build a customer base as well as develop new partnerships.

Try to design your engagement activities, programs and initiatives in a way that you can evaluate their usefulness and effectiveness in impacting behaviour change. This will also help you demonstrate your value to key stakeholders, including funders.

Phase two: Implementation

Run an efficient program

You will probably rely on volunteers to help run your events, so use their time well.

Here are some ways to manage repair events:

• It is key to consider the user experience of your volunteers, repairers and customers. To keep things clear and manage expectations, help all of these stakeholders understand what you can and can’t repair.
• Find ways to keep your repairers engaged and feeling valued so that you have the right workforce and a happy team to achieve your goals.
• Text your repairers one week out from the event to confirm who is available.
• Use a concierge at the registration table who welcomes the customers, assesses the goods as they arrive, and floats around the repair hub/cafe to help customers where needed.
• Provide activities to keep the guests occupied and engaged with the process. Offer tea and coffee. Set up tasks for the children, such as painting, colouring and sorting.
• Set up a booking and weighing system.
• Run a record keeping system to keep track of repairs and collect data to demonstrate the value of your repair activity. Some repair hub/cafes use the attendance sheet to record the weight of objects saved from landfill.

Promote your program and engage the community

Consider an online booking system

Most repair hubs/cafes have a permanent or regular day and venue, which helps to build customer awareness. Some repair hubs/cafes use online bookings (for example, through Humanitix or Eventbrite), which they advertise for 2 to 3 weeks before the event, as well as welcoming walk ins. However, this combination will depend on your resources.

Advantages of a booking system:

• People can see which repairers will be there.
• Your repairers know what sort of items to expect.
• You will know where people are travelling from.
• You can build an email database to promote your events and survey to gather valuable feedback.

Promotion

Consider the most appropriate advertising platforms for your programs and whether or not you plan to target certain groups. Different demographics in a community use different media types. Repair hubs/cafes have used Facebook to connect with community groups and buy-nothing groups. Repair hubs/cafes have also set up pop-up events, attended community fairs, and worked with sustainability groups to promote their services.

If you understand the demographic profile of your local community, you can improve information about events and about repairing so that it is accessible to groups like migrants and refugees.

Set your team up for success

When engaging volunteers, have clear position descriptions that outline their:

• roles
• responsibilities
• required skills.

Make sure volunteers have the appropriate training processes, manuals and resources.

Think about your insurance requirements, and what questions you may need to ask your repairers before they start work on items. Consider your volunteers’ needs and what guidance they may require to run the event.

Circular collaboration

Repair hubs/cafes are more effective when they work together. Consider your peer repair hub/cafe initiatives as a supportive and informative network that can help you achieve your shared circular goals.

Think about how you might be able to collaborate with each other. For example:

• help each other with consistent messaging
• share knowledge of repair event opportunities
• share repairers, knowledge of repair places, parts and sales
• provide local support to broader education campaigns.

Your program will also be much stronger, and achieve better results, if you identify opportunities for partnership with other organisations, such as:

• local government
• state government
• bicycle recyclers
• neighbourhood houses.

Phase three: Evaluation and improvements

Use your learnings to make improvements

Every time you run a session, think about how you might improve future practice. This might mean sharing knowledge gained on the day with your team or debriefing later with other repair hubs/cafes. It could even mean developing case studies for best practice.

When a new or unexpected repair issue arises, think about ways you can record or document the solution so that they can be repeated or applied elsewhere. Set up an easy-to-use document management system so that everyone can access information quickly and easily. There are free systems that you can use, such as Google Drive and OneDrive.

Funding and development

You need people on your team who understand finance and the obligations of running a business. Complement strong business and finance knowledge with good financial systems that help you to understand quickly how your organisation is performing so that you can respond appropriately.

All programs rely on fundraising, grants and donations, so this will become an important part of your activities.

While few repair hubs/cafes charge fees to encourage attendance at events and to not be in direct competition with repairers, there are other ways of encouraging financial viability:

• Encourage donations from the public/visitors. For example, provide the option for cash donations/bank transfer/card payment at events. Make t-shirts for your staff to wear with a QR code that leads visitors to the donation page of your website.
• Provide membership that includes perks, such as early notification of bookings.
• Seek out business donations and sponsorship. For example, ask your local hardware store to donate materials/equipment.
• Sell small upcycled/repaired items at events.
• Apply for local council grants and other local organisation grants, for example Lions Clubs.
• Run courses where participants pay fees to cover costs.
• Keep an eye out for funding opportunities from philanthropic organisations and different levels of government.
• Train your volunteers and staff to apply successfully for grants.

Collect data

While it may be challenging to define what you have saved from landfill, you can contribute your data to global measures and help to build a stronger story around collective impact through RepairMonitor.

Useful resources

• Why we really need to be able to fix our stuff, Griffith University
  
• iFixit and Repair Cafe Join Forces | iFixit News
• Australian Repair Network
• Repair Café Australia Facebook page
• Repair and Share Australia Facebook page

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Case study

Other circular economy initiative guides