Bendigo Repair Cafe moves into new, permanent location

On Saturday, the Bendigo Repair Cafe moved into a new, permanent home at 120 Garsed Street.

Co-convener Elsie L'Huillier said she was excited by the future for the group.

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"In the beginning we were just like six or seven people who were really interested in doing it, but now it's really taken off," she said.

"Governments are interested in this sort of thing and everyone's now getting it, that this isn't just a little people who are hobbyists and interested in not throwing something out, it's a whole worldwide movement."

The repair cafe operated on the third Saturday of every month, and people could bring in anything from broken appliances to clothes with holes in them for volunteers to fix.

The group is supported by the Bendigo Sustainability Group and the City of Greater Bendigo, through its circular economy program.

Co-convener Roz Effenberg said the cafe was also about offering advice and education, and the City would be able to hold workshops about waste, soft plastics recycling and other sustainability projects.

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The new site had space for what could be a recycled goods shop, Ms Effenberg said.

"We're hoping that it might be a little retail space with things that we've made that people can buy and know that it's things that otherwise would've gone into recycle or worse still into landfill," she said.

Ms L'Huillier said the repair cafe was a good place to start for people looking to live a bit more sustainably.

"People have sort of got to the point where they've almost given up because they really care and they're concerned and they're worried about the planet, but it just gets too hard," she said.

"It's about starting with one little thing and we think the repair cafe has been good for that because you might come in and get one thing fixed and it's not hard to do."

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Repairer Phil Rice has volunteering at the cafe for just less than a year, and said he'd been recycling and reusing things for more than 70 years.

"It's a great feeling to fix things, we don't always succeed and I've had a few spectacular disasters where I've turned something that was repairable into something that definitely wasn't repairable, but often we can get things going," he said.

"It's good feeling to see things getting a second life cause I just hate throwing things out."

Mr Rice said he was "offended by the modern trend of things being single use and then throw away."

"I'm just happy to be able to see things get a second or a third life," he said.

Keep up to date with the Bendigo Repair Cafe via their Facebook page.

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