Repair Café continues effort to reduce landfill

By Oliver Shedden

Mar 12, 2024

The Echuca-Moama Uniting Church opened its Repair Café on Saturday, March 9, to reduce landfill and encourage the community to fix their belongings instead of throwing them away.

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The Repair Café will continue the second Saturday of each month from 10am to noon at the Uniting Hall, where volunteers will be present to tend to any repair needs.

“The whole idea is that we repair things rather than have people throw them out; it’s to restore treasures,” Echuca-Moama Uniting Church member and Repair Café volunteer Cecilia Merrigan said.

“We do clothing repairs, small woodwork repairs, and sharpen tools.”

Ms Merrigan outlined that the Repair Café’s goal was to help mend people’s broken items and reduce landfill in the community.

“The main aim is to reduce landfill and ultimately stop people throwing stuff out,” she said.

Anne Peace, one of the founders of the Repair Café, said that the initiative was brought back to life after COVID.

“In this iteration of the Repair Café we’ve been active for about 18 months,” she said.

“We want to bring people together for a common cause.”

Patchwork Pride: Repair Café volunteers, Shane Stacey (left), Rachael Williams (middle) and Cecilia Merrigan (right) were happy with their efforts to reduce landfill. Photo by Oliver Shedden

Chris Janson, a member of the Echuca community, was thrilled with the repair job done on his favourite pair of jeans.

“The back pocket had been ripped, and I couldn’t repair it myself; things kept falling out, and I saw the Repair Café was open, so I thought I’d drop them off,” he said.

“These are my favourite pair of jeans, so having them repaired and being able to reuse them is fantastic.”

Seamstress Rachael Williams, who volunteered at the Repair Café, was happy to help Chris and anyone who needed alterations or patch-ups.

“When you have something really good quality that you can repair, it’s great,” she said.

“Talking to Chris, that’s his favourite pair of jeans; they don’t sell them any more, so it’s awesome to be able to help people out.”

Ms Williams discussed how her motivation for joining the Repair Café was to give her time to help people fix pre-loved items and doing her part to try and reduce landfill.

“It feels really good, and that’s my main reason for doing it. I want to reduce landfill and trying to limit fast fashion because it’s such a waste of money,” she said.

“It’s great to give back to the community and try to get the most out of what you have.”