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A Growing Number of ‘Repair Cafes’ Are Popping Up Around the World to Curb Consumer Waste - Inside Climate News
(insideclimatenews.org)
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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But why free? Rich countries need repair shops. This should be a viable career.
There is a free repair cafe near me and I'm thinking of creating one as well.
Since they get money from the city to do so that don't want to overlap on professional repair shops. So they only repair things that professional shop don't repair because it's not economically interesting for them.
Despite this rule they get a lot of repairs to do.
Because currently in rich country, repairing things is not a viable career outside of few niche areas.
My guess is because a lot of cheaper electronics are genuinely not worth repairing if you have to pay for it, even if the repair takes literally seconds to do, and anything that’s worth paying to repair can already be taken to eg computer repair places.
The world we live in now is absolutely full of cheap electronics. That stuff breaks more often than better built and thus pricier models, so it should be the first stuff to get fixed. And that kinda requires free repair.
I mean how much would you pay to fix a $20 coffee maker/kettle?
$40
Good logic
We're not replacing expensive parts or anything. If something is beyond the capability of a volunteer, or requires something we don't have, we refer them to a local repair shop instead.
Yeah but here’s the catch. If you want them to look at your shit it’s a flat €80 fee here. Whatever the outcome. And then you pay for parts with insane markups. And if it requires thinkering well they don’t do that (my American fridge where the dispenser lever isn’t made anymore- no interest in doing custom print or bypass).
So unless you have happy interested passionate persons which usually is a hacker’s club you only have those kind of services it seems :-/