Your coffee machine breaks down, or your laptop, or your dishwasher. You want to have your device repaired, but that's not easy. Sometimes devices today are designed to be unrepairable. Or it's possible, but then it's expensive. Or it could be, but where can you find a repairer? In many cases, it's more attractive to just buy a new device. That is not very sustainable.

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Repairing used to be very common, sometimes even a necessity. Freelance journalist and part-time district manager in Amsterdam Martine Postma came up with the concept of a repair café. In October 2009 (even then!) the first café started. The idea was to be able to take your broken device to a place where handy and experienced people (volunteers) could repair it. There was interest in this initiative from all over the world, and there are now around 4,000 repair cafes worldwide. Deventer has also had such a café, since 2012, but it remains a drop in the bucket for wasting materials and raw materials. If you really want to stimulate the reuse of materials and waste as raw materials to achieve a circular sustainable economy, this requires a different way of design, for example.

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Prof.dr.ir. Conny Bakker, professor at the Faculty of Industrial Design at Delft University of Technology, and her research group are developing methods and techniques to design products that last longer, are easier to repair and ultimately better to recycle. She will talk about her research at the Science Café. In 2024, industrial designers received support when the European Parliament passed the Right to Repair Act, the Right to Repair.

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Live music is provided by Dubio and moderator is Almar Otten.

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