People urged to visit repair cafes as research shows 60% throw away everyday household appliances
30 September 2025
As Recycling Week 2025 gets underway, Repair Café Lambeth is challenging the throwaway culture by showing just how many everyday items can be repaired and reused. Backed by The National Lottery Community Fund, the café is helping people cut waste, save money and learn new skills — proving that most broken items don’t need to end up in landfill.
A repair café is marking Recycling Week 2025 by dispelling myths around most household items being designed to break down soon after purchase, and is urging more people to visit their local repair cafe rather than their local landfill site.
Repair Café Lambeth believes the biggest reason people bin items such as broken kettles and vacuum cleaners is down to a false belief that most of them are deliberately made with a limited lifespan, otherwise known as ‘planned obsolescence’.
This comes as new research from The National Lottery Community Fund shows that, on average, 60% of adults in the UK have thrown away household items in the last year including toasters, washing machines and hairdryers, many of which could have been saved with a repair.
Eoin Hefferan, who heads up the repair café, is urging more people to visit their local repair centre to help reduce electrical waste, with almost half a billion of everyday small electrical items finding their way to landfill each year.
He said: “I think it’s less that people are afraid to fix things like kettles, hair dryers and toasters, but more so that they are under the false impression that these items are made to just break and be replaced, when actually they may be fixable.
“We successfully and safely fix 91% of everything that comes through the door, with over half of what we see being electrical items, including, most commonly, lamps, kitchen appliances, and heaters.”
This week marks Recycle Week 2025, with this year’s theme ‘Rescue Me! Recycle’ encouraging people to give commonly binned items a new lease of life.
Communities across the UK have seen the rise of repair cafes in recent years, as people strive to make-do-and-mend in the face of rising living costs and a push towards sustainability.
However, the research from The National Lottery Community Fund shows that over 77% of people have never been to a repair group or café within their community.
Fixer volunteers at Repair Café Lambeth talk visitors through each repair step by step, explaining what’s gone wrong and how to put it right. As well as repairing the product, they also help visitors go home with the skills to safely fix items themselves.
The café recently received funding from The National Lottery Community Fund to grow its community of fixers, as well as help to increase the number of people that come along with their broken items.
One person to benefit is Tom, who brought his broken stereogram to the café after it was bought by his mum from an antiques market.
He says: “My family has moved around quite a lot, but the stereogram has always been there. To me, it always felt like a part of our family. Whether it be dancing around the table on Christmas day listening to Wham! or enjoying Peruvian pipes while Mum cooked up a storm.”
After his mum moved house into a small cottage, Tom brought the stereogram up to London with him. However, after attempting to replace the stylus, he instead detached important wiring, making the right speaker unusable.
It was at Lambeth Repair Café that Riccardo, a volunteer at the café, managed to work his magic and get it working again. Tom says: “The stereogram is getting more use than ever - my housemates have been collecting records from family members and markets. We eat supper and put a record on. It's lovely and wouldn't be possible without the Lambeth Repair Café.”
Eoin said: “If you can carry it in, we can fix it. In winter we often get children’s ripped coats and lots of heaters. All year round we see laptops, phones, household items and clothing — often needing a small repair or just a bit of advice. Each new visitor brings a new story.
“Over 30% of the people who visit us are unemployed and on benefits and really appreciate our services being free, so we would like to give a huge thank you to The National Lottery Community Fund and National Lottery players for helping us provide what has become a vital service for many.”
In the last four years, The National Lottery Community Fund has awarded almost £300m to over 3,500 environmental projects across the UK including repair cafés, upcycling and sewing groups, helping people from Belfast to Brighton and everywhere in between to mend clothes as well as fix broken household items.
The National Lottery Community Fund is now urging the public to seek out their local repair café or mending group to repair or recycle clothing or damaged household items instead of throwing them away. It is also calling on charities and community groups to visit https://bit.ly/Environmentfunding to apply for funding to set up projects in their community which could help the environment.
Funding is available for environmental projects of all shapes and sizes, from small grants of up to £20,000 through its open access Awards for All programme to organisations working across the UK through the Climate Action Fund.
It’s shocking that we still have such a throwaway culture that is causing significant damage to our environment. “While many people don’t have the know-how to repair these items themselves, groups like Lambeth Repair Café are popping up all over the country, offering people the chance to save money, learn new skills, develop friendships, and be part of a community that is doing something truly significant to help the environment.
John - Environment Lead at The National Lottery Community Fund
Notes for editors
The research was conducted by Censuswide, among a sample of 2752 Respondents in the UK (16+) - Weighted to be nationally representative by Gender, Age, and Region. The data was collected between 18.07.2025 - 28.07.2025. Censuswide abides by and employs members of the Market Research Society and follows the MRS code of conduct and ESOMAR principles. Censuswide is also a member of the British Polling Council.
https://www.materialfocus.org.uk/about-us/
Since April 2021, The National Lottery Community Fund has awarded3592grants totalling£294,900,901to environmental projects across the UK.
About The National Lottery Community Fund
We are the largest non-statutory community funder in the UK – community is at the heart of our purpose, vision and name.
We support activities that create resilient communities that are more inclusive and environmentally sustainable and that will strengthen society and improve lives across the UK.
We’re proud to award money raised by National Lottery players to communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and to work closely with Government to distribute vital grants and funding from key Government programmes and initiatives.
As well as responding to what communities tell us is important to them, our funding is focused on four key missions, supporting communities to:
1. Come together
2. Be environmentally sustainable
3. Help children and young people thrive
4. Enable people to live healthier lives.
Thanks to the support of National Lottery players, we distribute around £500 million a year through 10,000+ grants and plan to invest over £4bn of funding into communities by 2030. We’re privileged to be able to work with the smallest of local groups right up to UK-wide charities, enabling people and communities to bring their ambitions to life.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million each week for good causes throughout the UK. Since The National Lottery began in 1994, £47 billion has been raised and more than 670,000 individual grants have been made across the UK - the equivalent of around 240 National Lottery grants in every UK postcode district.