Meadows repair café offers free help fixing everyday items

Morning Briefing: Saturday, 25th April

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A new repair café is opening today in the Meadows, helping restore life to many items that might otherwise be destined for the bin. Meadows Menders Repair Café runs from 10am this morning where volunteers will make best efforts to repair clothing, small electronics, and bikes, amongst other items.

The event is organised by Green Meadows, a community group who have a thirteen initiatives to help the city move towards being carbon neutral by 2028.

One initiative, The Meadows Energy Audit, aims to collect data on energy usage in homes in order to give better evidence when applying for funding to retrofit homes with better energy-saving infrastructure, like insulation and solar panels. This survey is open until 2nd May.

Green Meadows itself is a project of the charity Nottingham Energy Partnership, which helps give advice and, in some cases, practical services to help households in Nottinghamshire with energy costs and the impact of climate change.

The United Nations last month issued a report calling the fashion industry one of the world's worst polluters, generating eight per cent of global greenhouse gases. This is worsened by clothes being worn for only half as long before being thrown away, compared to buying habits in 2000. Even donating clothes is not the ethical salve one might expect: a Nottingham Trent University submission of evidence to Parliament found that donated garments often end up in poorer countries, which can reduce local textile industries.

One solution is to repair clothes, rather than ditching them. This can be costly: All Alts on Lower Parliament Street recently charged £40 for a repair of a zip on a coat, which on an £80 coat may feel high to some customers.

This is where mending cafes like Meadows Menders can help. At the event today, they can attempt to repair such issues. In this example, they would recommend bringing the thread and replacement zip in, and they will make a best effort to repair it.

They also list tool sharpening, jewellery, guitars, and woodwork as items that could be fixed on the day.

Repair cafes are popping up in other areas of Nottinghamshire too. Bingham has a monthly one at Bingham Methodist Church. Sherwood Methodist Church has a weekly event. There are others - it's worth searching for a local one.

Meadows Menders will run from 10am until 1pm today at Arkwright Meadows Community Gardens. The event page on the Green Meadows website has more details.

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Morning BriefingShane P