Repair shops could fix the UK’s ‘broken high street’

Dr Adam Read MBE, chief sustainability and external affairs officer for Suez recycling and recovery UK, and Clare Seek of charity Share Portsmouth discussed the issue on the Carbon Copy podcast last week.

They shared their visions for a new kind of town centre where items are kept in use longer, local people save money whilst gaining skills and feel more connected to the place where they live.

Over 7,400 retail stores closed across the UK in 2024 with nearly 56,000 jobs being lost.

Seek, who founded Share Portsmouth in 2022 following a successful pilot project, explained her vision for how her city could look in 2040: “We don’t need to run a standalone repair hub like Share Portsmouth anymore. We’re a happy victim of our own success. Young people and older people have retrained and accessing careers in repairing stuff. Our high street has been enlivened and a big part of that is with repair shops.”

Carbon Copy Podcast host Isabelle Sparrow added: “We are already seeing a big shift towards buying second-hand and vintage items. Two-thirds of Britons own at least one item of second-hand clothing; and second-hand furniture is also growing in popularity with recent data showing over a quarter of us would consider buying preloved furniture in the future.

“Initiatives like Share Portsmouth and Suez’s Renew Hub show what’s possible and demonstrate that reuse and repair bring more than economic and environmental gains by offering social and community benefits as well.”

Suez runs several reuse shops across the UK which take working items from recycling centres and resells them.

It also runs “The Renew Hub” in Greater Manchester in collaboration with R4GM. The hub takes items donated at recycling centres across Greater Manchester for repair before reselling them.

Read added: “I’d like to think that in the next ten years or so we can get 50% of households doing reuse and repair on a regular basis so that it’s the norm. I think you’re going to see a huge swell of interest.

“There’ll be far fewer items being discarded and shops like our Renew Hubs won’t just be at the recycling centre – they’ll be filling up empty spaces in the high street, providing people with skills and training opportunities and paying proper money for repair and upcycling work. This will be the economy of the future.”

‘Do Something Bigger’: A new campaign from the Carbon Copy podcast

The episode is the latest in Carbon Copy’s series “Do Something Bigger”, which supports the charity’s year-long campaign “25 Big Local Actions in 2025”.

Every fortnight this year, the podcast will highlight a different way that people across the UK can have a positive impact on climate or nature in the place where they live or work.

The episode is available on the Carbon Copy website, Spotify and other streaming platforms.