BUFFALO, N.Y. — After starting one year ago, Dare to Repair Cafe has fixed almost 200 items for free, giving them new life — and saving them from ending up in a landfill.

"So the vacuum was only 10 pounds, but I did over hear that over the past year that they've kept something like over 1,000 pounds out of the landfill," said Kate Gorman of Buffalo.

1,610 pounds to be exact. On Saturday the repair cafe was in Buffalo's Univeristy Heights, but the repair cafe tries to travel to a different location each month, making sure that anyone who wants to have something fixed, is able to.

"We don't like to sustain one area and that's primarily because a lot of people don't have access to bring their broken item to get repaired which is why they end up throwing it out, it's just easier to throw it on the curb than get it repaired so which is why we're really trying to target all of these repair cafes for locations around the city," said Joe Kurtz, University Heights Co-Lab Manager.

 

Broken items can be brought to Dare to Repair Cafe, where volunteers do their best to fix what they can, but there isn't any guarantees. However, when volunteers are able to successfully repair something, they go even further by teaching the owner how to fix it by themselves.

"The beauty of this initiative is that we live in a culture where we primarily throw away things and the beauty of this is that we teach people how to repair those things and we want to create a systemic idea where we create education through different generations, not just a culture of throwing away but a culture of repairing," said Kurtz.

With help from the University Heights Tool Library, Buffalo Recycles, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, they plan to repair even more items and increase the amount of waste recycled, while also* giving workers the platform they need for hands on leaening.

"We really want to connect to local unions to potentially work in apprenticeships so people who might be going into a trade can get actual credit through being a participant of a repair cafe so really translating practical knowledge and giving people practical use for it in the real world," said Kurtz.

And they don't see it slowing down any time soon.

"I'm gonna tell my friends about it and be sure to come back with the next broken thing I can find," said Gorman.