Message from Huntingdon District Council’s Waste Minimisation Support Officer:
After some successful repair cafes and clothes swaps happening in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, we are looking at facilitating more of these events in new towns and villages. Would you or anyone you know be interested in helping us host one of these events? Here are some details on how it works:
REPAIR CAFÉ
Huntingdon is hosting its first repair café on the 25th of August. There’s nothing like going to a repair café to see how they work and how brilliant they are at tackling waste, bringing communities together, sharing skills, and cutting carbon. There is also a Repair Café in St Ives on the 30th of September.
Attending this would be a brilliant foundation, and you can also attend: ‘How to organise a Repair Café in your community’ training sessions. They are on Zoom and are happening on Thurs 14th Sept , 7:30 – 8:30pm, and then Tues 26th Sept at the same time. They are free to attend and open to all. Once a village or town decides they’ll go for it, Cambridge Carbon Footprint can lend you their huge toolkit, and you can access to a register of nearly 100 Cambs-based repairers.
SWISHES
Swishes have taken off in the region, with an average of one event a week in Cambridgeshire. They range between swapping say 10kg of textiles (27kg of C02e saved per kg or textiles reused) and half a tonne! Any leftovers will get reused either via a charity or we could recycle them ourselves.
The Swish Kit is free to borrow from Cambridge Carbon Footprint. There’s a nice write-up in Varsity Magazine of the first Swish held by St John’s College https://www.varsity.co.uk/fashion/25252 earlier this year.
FIX FEST
Cambridge Carbon Footprint and ourselves are looking at hosting a Fix Fest in October or November this year. A listing of past FixFest is here for an idea of what they are like.
Let us know if you would like to get involved!