Fixing Factory opens in Camden to tackle WEEE

The Fixing Factory will act as a community repair hub, allowing residents to get small household appliances and electronics fixed, learn repair skills from volunteer fixers and take part in weekly repair workshops.

It will also reach out to local repair businesses to “foster a repair ecosystem” and allow them to benefit from residents’ interest in fixing their devices.

Cllr Nasim Ali, the Mayor of Camden, officially opened the Fixing Factory at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Camden council helped the Fixing Factory find its Queen’s Crescent location.

Cllr Ali said: “The Fixing Factory will be a great opportunity for our local community to learn more about climate change while also providing a much-needed service.”

The Fixing Factories project is run in partnership by social enterprise the Restart Project and climate charity Possible, with support from community group Mer IT and the West London Waste Authority.

The project received more than £190,000 in funding from The National Lottery Community Fund and is also backed by the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations.

Camden

At the facility’s opening, Dermot Jones, Fixing Factories Camden project manager for Possible, said: “The level of community interest we’ve seen already has been huge. E-waste is a significant problem in addressing climate change and our culture of overconsumption.

“With this project, not only can we start reducing e-waste on a local level, we can start building a culture of making your stuff last longer, where people see the opportunities of keeping appliances going rather than trading them in for a newer model.”

The inaugural Fixing Factory opened in Brent earlier this year and repairs residents’ broken laptops, desktops and tablets before giving them to those in the community that need them most in an effort to address the “digital divide”.

Adam Harrison, the council’s cabinet member for a sustainable Camden, said he was “delighted” to welcome the Fixing Factory to his borough.

“We want to challenge the ‘take-make-dispose’ model of the linear economy in Camden and replace it with an alternative which values repair and reuse, while cutting consumption emissions, reducing waste and helping residents during the cost of living crisis,” he said.

Representing an estimated population of more than 260,000, Camden council had a household waste recycling rate of 28.6% in the 2020/21 financial year.