My gran’s 1982 Singer sewing machine is once again hauled out of the cupboard for the trip down the road to do duty at the Te Atatū South Repair Cafe in Auckland. They don’t make them like they used to, and that’s crystal clear as skilled electricians, sewers, handymen and technicians break it to disappointed punters that their not-so-old irons, electric jugs or baby alarms (sometimes sewing machines) are just not able to be fixed.
Yet most people leave the repair cafe happy. Their favourite jacket is good for another year or two after being mended. Their GHD hair straighteners and rice cookers are once more ready for action and, perhaps more importantly, these items won’t end up in the bin, destined for landfill.
There are at least 90 repair cafes around the country run on voluntary labour. Eight in Auckland are run by Doughnut Economics Advocates New Zealand (Deanz). The rest come under the umbrella of Repair Café Aotearoa New Zealand (RCANZ), set up in 2020.
It’s winter outside, but inside the Te Atatū South Community Centre the atmosphere is warm as customers line up for the technicians. There’s ever-popular Eric Mills, a registered electrician, who usually has the longest queue. Kara Beattie and Cathy Watson, who are expert textile repairers, have been sewing for decades – they made their kids’ clothes back in the day. Beattie will even demonstrate her sashiko (Japanese embroidery) skills to mend holes in clothing or blankets as required.
The aim is to repair items with customers rather than for them. Sewing on a button, for example, or showing someone how to take up a hem. Deanz board member and manager of the Grey Lynn Repair Cafe Lisa Compton says, “We work alongside the person who brings the item in, so that they’re taken along the journey. It’s not a ‘we’ll take your item and fix it for you and give it back’, it’s a ‘see what’s being done’, and hopefully along the way, our visitors will also learn what’s involved in fixing an item.”
Koha is also involved – whether $5, $20 or $50. It’s more important than ever now that Deanz is chasing funds from a dwindling pool of community grants. Compton estimates it would take not much more than $800 a month to keep those eight repair cafes running, as long as premises are rent free.
In a typical month, the success rate for fixing items averages 76% across the eight volunteer initiatives that run from Ōrewa to Pukekohe. Deanz estimates it saves visitors about $10,000 in repair costs a month and about $25,000 in replacement costs. Most sessions run on Saturdays – 11am-2pm – on a set date each month, but Te Atatū South runs on a Friday night from 5-8pm.
“Our volunteers are our lifeblood and they’re amazing,” says Compton. “Some of our volunteers, especially our electricians, because they need to be certified, cover more than one repair cafe, because so many people have so many items that need to be looked at – whether it’s a switch to make a lamp work, or a laptop, or a food processor, or a coffee machine. They work incredibly hard to get things going for people, so that those items don’t go into a landfill and they don’t need to be replaced, so they end up saving money.”
RCANZ provides support for more than 80 free pop-up repair cafes and plans to run a repair festival next month around the country from September 6-14.
All this waste
The first repair cafe appeared in 2009 in Amsterdam and the international body now estimates 66,348 items are fixed every month – saved from ever-growing landfills that swallow up broken things made of plastic, aluminium, steel and various amalgams that don’t really break down.
Who’s to blame for all this waste? It’s often brought to the door of manufacturers, who critics say don’t make goods that last. When the items break down, they often can’t be fixed, sometimes because the individual parts can’t be replaced, or the inner functions are surrounded in plastic casing that can’t be removed.
Consumer NZ has been highlighting this problem for years. It says New Zealand has one of the highest rates per person of unwanted electrical waste, with at least 100,000 tonnes thrown out each year.
That’s about 20kg per New Zealander in terms of e-waste, says Abby Damen, Consumer NZ communications and campaigns adviser.
“So that’s your broken phone or pieces of laptop. It’s all those little components that make up e-waste,” she says.
“By law, a product should last a ‘reasonable’ amount of time, but many products are falling short of this,” says Consumer NZ on its website. It gives an example of a cordless vacuum cleaner that the agency would expect to last five years. “But our research found they work for 2.2 years on average. A corded vacuum should last for eight years, but consumers have told us they last 4.8 years on average.”
It launched a petition that drew 21,000 signatures and has thrown its weight behind the Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill put forward by Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson.
The proposed law change would require manufacturers to make repair parts, facilities and information available in New Zealand. Consumers will be able to ask that goods be repaired within a reasonable timeframe, rather than replaced.
The bill passed its first reading in February and is due to be reported back from select committee hearings this month.
One of the issues, says Damen, is the loophole in the existing legislation that allows manufacturers to say they don’t provide repair assistance if the item breaks down.
“The flaw in effect of that is that often people will be served up a replacement. So, you drop off your kettle, but instead of getting that kettle fixed, it’s much easier for the retailer and potentially for the manufacturer that it just gets replaced.”
Why should our environment suffer because we’ve been too slow to more on this?
Consumer NZ would like the amendment bill to be the foundation for a labelling regime, maybe a sticker like the eco star sticker on whiteware, that helps buyers choose items based on how fixable and durable they are, she says.
German manufacturer Miele is already doing this by providing a 10-year warranty on its appliances. Such stickers would be a rating for repairability as well as for how long they would last without breaking down.
Over time, these ratings would contribute to Consumer NZ’s goal of product stewardship, where product-makers are accountable for the goods they send into the world, says Damen. “That’s thinking about the birth of the product and how it lives throughout its life, then how we manage it when it dies.”
She points to France, where in 2021 a repairability index was introduced for items such as laptops, electric lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners and dishwashers. In 2025, the French government ushered in a “durability index”, starting with washing machines and televisions.
France isn’t the only country making headway. In six US states – California, Colorado, Minnesota, Maine, New York and Oregon – right-to-repair laws have been passed, some targeting car manufacturers, but others covering all consumer electronics, with many more states considering them.
Last year, the European Parliament issued a directive that clarified obligations for manufacturers to repair goods and encouraged consumers to extend a product’s lifecycle through repair. And in the UK, right-to-repair laws were introduced in 2021 to cover dishwashers, washing machines, washer-dryers, refrigeration appliances and TVs and other electronic screens.
In 2022, Australia brought in a right-to-repair law that was limited to automotive services. It ensures vehicle manufacturers give independent workshops diagnostic, repair and service information at a fair price.
Complex supply chains
New Zealand is a small country, and already the prospect has been raised of big names such as Apple and Samsung choosing to increase prices, or not send their products at all.
During the bill’s first reading, Act MP Todd Stephenson said large consumer electronics companies like Apple and Samsung have very complex supply chains. So putting something in place for a small jurisdiction like New Zealand raised issues. “We do need to think about what that might do and whether that might deter them from bringing their goods here.”
Surely, it would be better to ride on the coat-tails of larger, more powerful nations, rather than blazing a path ourselves with wide-ranging legislation?
That’s certainly the view of Employers and Manufacturers’ Association head of advocacy, strategy and finance Alan McDonald: “You run the risk of people just going, ‘Oh, it’s too hard if we have to provide all these parts. We won’t bother going there.’
“Another part of the problem is that we don’t actually produce any of that stuff here. So that means the retailers get caught in the middle because they’re the only ones that provide that stuff. And who’s going to hold the inventory of the spare parts? Most of those big brands here just have a corporate sales office.”
Instead, legislation should focus on waste management, he says, adding most businesses are already doing that well. “Most of those bigger manufacturers are recycling a lot of that stuff because there are things in there, there’s componentry in there, that they want.
“This particular piece of legislation is too wide, and although it’s well-intentioned, it probably won’t achieve the outcomes they want.”
He adds some items are just too hard and too costly to fix. The sophisticated technology involved in products has helped bring the prices down, but at the same time made them difficult to repair. And the specialist technicians needed to fix them may not even live here.
It’s not like the old days when washing machines and fridges lasted decades. Those machines had far fewer moving parts and they didn’t have a motherboard or other high-tech elements. “So, yeah, you can hark back to those days, but we don’t do it that way now.”
Dumping risk
Yet, Consumer NZ chief executive Jon Duffy says, we can’t afford not to get on board with right-to-repair laws. If we don’t, we risk becoming a dumping ground as other countries speed ahead with demands on manufacturers to provider higher quality, more-repairable products, leading to manufacturers turning to New Zealand to sell lower quality, less-repairable goods.
“Why should our environment suffer because we’ve been too slow to move on this?” And other countries that have moved ahead on this have not found that prices on whiteware and other goods rise as a result of legislation.
Duffy agrees, however, that the bill is too broad. It should apply only to goods above a certain monetary threshold, say $50 or $100, so excluding $9 kettles from Kmart, he says.
Ultimately, he believes consumers should have the choice to buy a higher priced item that can be repaired or a lower priced one that meets their budget. “We need better disclosure so that consumers can make informed purchasing decisions.”
Does he think some form of this amendment to the Consumer Guarantees Act will succeed? Duffy hopes so, but says there are concerning signs from the coalition government on climate change and letting markets self-regulate that it may stymie attempts to impose obligations on manufacturers.
“But the position we’re in at the moment is untenable because the amount of waste we’re pouring into landfill is not sustainable.”
Duffy is full of admiration for the repair cafe movement, which, he says, demonstrably keeps products out of landfills while helping to build and strengthen communities. It’s also handing down skills and building resilience.
“It’s bloody awesome. Forces are arrayed against it; it’s effectively trying to break the system, which is designed to keep you throwing away products and buying new products. It’s a point of resistance against a throwaway society.”
It’s now 7.30pm in Te Atatū South and the repair cafe is winding down. Cups of tea have been passed around and visitor numbers have dwindled. Fiona is delighted to see the fraying zip on the jacket she bought for her daughter on TradeMe has been fixed. And Norman has returned to show the sewers their handiwork on his pool leaf scooper, which he says has saved him $100 in replacement parts. Brendan, the owner of an older-style Sunbeam mixer, has left, tasked with sourcing secondhand beaters to fit his ageing but still-in-working-order appliance.
Twenty-six items fixed and hundreds of dollars saved for the “customers”, the volunteers leave happy, satisfied they’ve done something good for their community and the environment.