Fans of the BBC TV programme The Repair Shop can rejoice: the first ever report by the international Open Repair Alliance reveals rapid growth and ‘huge public enthusiasm’ for repairs.
Released this week ahead of Saturday’s International Repair Day, it indicates that around 190,000 electrical items have been saved from landfill by volunteer fixers over the course of the past year. The alliance now receives data from 1,158 active groups, compared to only 246 groups in 2019.
They’ve collectively logged more than 200,000 attempts to repair electronic items at community repair events around the world since data started being collected in 2012. Over a quarter of these have taken place in the UK. For all types of items, an estimated 55,000 were successfully fixed in the UK in the last year alone.
