The Repair Café, an initiative of The Clean Earth Trust, has received £1,125 in funding from Guernsey Electricity’s Power to the People Fund. The money will be used to provide training for Repair Café volunteers as well as equipment and parts.
Camilla Smillie, Sustainable Projects Lead at the Clean Earth Trust Comments, “We are delighted to receive this funding from Guernsey Electricity, which will help us to improve the electrical item repair service that we can offer at the Repair Café. Our goal is to stem the flow of unnecessary electronic waste by helping our community to repair their small household electrical items for free whilst also sharing skills and promoting a ‘mending mindset’.”
Imogen Berryman, communications specialist at Guernsey Electricity comments, “Since launching Power to the People fund at the end of last year, we were pleased to have received lots of innovative and interesting applications. The Repair Café’s purpose specifically resonates well with Guernsey Electricity’s environmental vision and our Environmental Sustainability Strategy. We are pleased to provide this funding to a worthwhile initiative that will help reduce waste by allowing more items to be safely repaired and reused whilst giving important electrical safety skills to volunteers.”
The way that we use and discard electrical items is a major issue, with e-waste now the fastest growing waste stream in the world, projected to reach 70 million tonnes per year in 2030, according to the Global E-Waste Monitor 2020 (http://ewastemonitor.info/). Less than 20% of e-waste is recycled, resulting in significant loss of resources and raw materials and the risk of toxic materials leaching into the environment from landfill.
Additional legislation including ‘Right to Repair’ laws as announced by the UK government today (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/electrical-appliances-to-be-cheaper-to-run-and-last-longer-with-new-standards) is a step in the right direction, and we hope to see this extended to cover a broader range of items, especially smaller household items like radios and lamps that are commonly brought to Repair Cafes.
Repair Café events have been paused during lockdown but anyone who needs repair advice and help can post a question to the Repair Café Guernsey Community group https://www.facebook.com/groups/repaircafecommunityguernsey.
The Clean Earth Trust would also like to congratulate the other successful recipients of funding from Guernsey Electricity’s Power To The People Fund, Lihou Charitable Trust and La Société Guernesiaise’s bat group.