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Cutting down on waste: Boise's first Repair Café helps fix your broken items

Have you ever had a broken item that you've wanted to fix, but weren't sure how? Well the Repair Café is helping to solve that problem, pairing people and their broken household belongings with tinkerers and tools to help fix them.

Broadcast on:
20 Jun 2023
"Cynthia Richards shows off her newly repaired juicer, which had given some 30 years of loyal service before an orange-heavy recipe brought it to a halt."
"Cynthia Richards shows off her newly repaired juicer, which had given some 30 years of loyal service before an orange-heavy recipe brought it to a halt."( Murphy Woodhouse / Boise State Public Radio)

Repair Cafés have a simple goal: pairing people and their broken household belongings with tinkerers and tools to fix them, shrinking the flow of waste to landfills.

The idea started in Europe but has spread to the U.S. and cafés are starting to pop up in the American West. Boise just had its first, and the Mountain West News Bureau’s Murphy Woodhouse went to check it out.