Oui, c´est juste! Un café pour réparer des choses!
Other than the name suggests, the first "repair café" was organized in the Netherlands (Amsterdam) in 2009. The concept is simple. Instead of a normal coffee shop where people go to drink coffee or a coke and have a chat, to a repair café people go with the goal to try to repair broken stuff. Of course you can have a little chat and a coffee, too. But you can also bring your broken electrical devices or clothes etc. and repair them together with others. Usually, the host also organizes some volunteering "pros" that can assist you. A win-win for everyone including mama earth! Maybe there´s a repair cafè in your town already or you want to organize one yourself! (image: Repair Cafe Duesseldorf, D)
For the generation of babyboomers in the 70ies or 80ies it was probably mostly seen as a sign of poverty and failure when somebody was buying second hand or picking something up from the street that was left for free. Luckily, this mentality seems about to change.
Since the beginning of humanity until just a few decades ago, most people (also in rich countries) didn't have enough of anything. You had to work a lot to be able to buy a new pair of shoes or a new coat for wintertime. It was normal having to economize for quite some time to be able to buy furniture. Those things were lifetime investments.
When those things started to become more affordable, the ones who could afford buying clothes or furniture more often wanted others to see that they too belonged to the middle class. The only reason you would buy second hand was because you don't have enough money to buy new.
But that was when environmental pollution or climate warming wasn't a thing. Spending money did never have a downside. For example to buy and fly around the globe in a private jet just for fun was considered cool by everyone. Spending money meant that one is contributing to the economy. Contributing to the economy meant contributing to more production. And more production of goods meant contributing to the well-being of society. Because society needed more goods. More shoes, more clothes, more cars, more furniture etc.
But things have changed. Nowadays contributing to more production actually means contributing to overproduction. Means contributing to more waste, more environmental pollution, less qualitiy of life. Not helping but actually harming society in the long term. Destroying nature and driving climate change will hurt every single one of us humans. Even if you are a billionnaire who seem to not have to care about anything; Where will you spend your vacation when every single part of the ocean is polluted, when you can't enjoy the sun anymore because it is too hot, when one can't breathe normally because of smog due to never ending bush fires etc.
Keeping our environmental footprint low will in many cases contribute more to societal well-being than earning and spending money. For each cloth, furniture etc. a certain amount of water had to be used, a certain amount of energy was generated (in a non-sustainanable way). Probably a bit of toxic paint ended up in a river somewhere and a certain amount of greenhouse gas (CO2 or other) was emitted into the atmosphere.
That's why it is always a good thing if we can re-use things. If you find something put on the street for free that you can use don't be ashamed to pick it up! It is not a sign of poverty anymore if you buy second-hand but rather a sign of wisdom.