A total of 21 items were repaired at the May Taunton Repair Café.

Thanks to all the volunteer repairers who helped out at this event with special thanks to On Your Bike for repairing a whopping 8 bicycles.

An old sewing basket with a broken handle presented us with a new challenge which was brilliantly solved by Bruce by using jewellery wire to form a loop to attach the handle back on. Our ‘customer’ Kirstie was delighted with the result and left the following comment:

“Thank you for a creative solution to give my great grandma’s sewing box a longer life. I appreciate you taking the time to fix this.”

This month we have used the Repair Café Carbon Calculator to calculate the carbon emissions prevented by the repairs. The Carbon Calculator was launched in April 2020 as a result of a three months collaboration between researcher Steve Privett, Professor Martin Charter of Farnham Repair Café and the University for the Creative Arts (UCA).

The Carbon Calculator was developed by considering the total sum of embodied Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions contained within the products successfully repaired by UK Repair Cafés. This was quantified by estimating the GHG emissions that would have been created had the successfully repaired products instead been replaced by newly manufactured products.

Furthermore, the calculator takes a number of other variables into consideration such as average transport emissions to and from the Repair Café and spare parts use etc.