The University of Exeter Repair Café is a new circular initiative aimed at reducing waste, saving resources and extending the life of everyday items through repair rather than replacement. Open to students, staff and local residents, the Repair Café provides a welcoming space where people can bring broken or damaged items and get help from skilled volunteers to fix them, free of charge.
By encouraging repair over disposal, the café supports a more sustainable and circular approach to consumption. Repairing keeps much loved and useful items in use for longer, reduces the demand for new products and saves the energy and raw materials required for manufacturing and transport. In many cases, repair offers greater environmental benefits than recycling, especially for electronics, which often require energy-intensive processes to break down.
The Repair Café aligns with the goals of our Circular Economy Strategy 2024 – 2030. The first planning meeting was held on July 4th, led by Peter Rayment (Senior IT Professional Services Partner), Meg Haslam (Sustainable Living Assistant) and Laura Buchanan (Business Development Manager – KTP). The meeting took place in the Digital Maker Space, now the designated location for the Repair Café, and brought together enthusiastic staff and community members to shape the vision for the first event.
The first Repair Café event will take place on November 25th 2025, and then once a month from January 2026 onwards. Whether you’re interested in helping out as a volunteer repairer, supporting the event as an organiser or simply bringing something along to be repaired, we’d love to have you.
To get involved or find out more, contact us at repaircafe@exeter.ac.uk. Join us in creating a culture of repair, skill-sharing and sustainability at the University!
