LUDLOW’S antidote to the throwaway society returns on Saturday.

The Repair Café is happening between 10 am and 12.30 pm at the Ludlow Mascall Centre.

If your New Year resolutions included not throwing ‘stuff’ away this is an ideal opportunity to put that to the test!

If you’ve got something which has broken, isn’t working properly or which needs mending, just turn up and Diane Lyle’s team of volunteers will do their best to fix it.

Repair Cafés are spreading throughout the country and in Shropshire Ludlow has joined cafes in Shrewsbury and Bridgnorth.

A Repair Café is where people can take broken items in the hope they can be repaired, so their useful life is extended and adding to landfill is postponed – at least for a while.

Owners of these broken items can watch while repairs are attempted – and can learn not only that a fix might be possible, but that they, too, might have a go themselves so a new skill is learned.

The repairers, all volunteers, come with skills and expertise built up over the years as they have fixed a variety of items either through financial necessity or simply because they wanted to see if they could.

Volunteers can also build friendships and learn new skills from each other.

“Part of the challenge – and part of the buzz for that fantastic team - is that we never know what might come through the door on the day,” said Ms Lyle.

“Items can be purely practical and functional –but each time something arrives which is treasured and embedded with memories.”

The idea of the Repair Cafe is in part an environment initiative to reduce the amount of material that goes for burial in landfill sites and also for recycling which is undertaken by local authorities.

With a tax levied on landfill this is a cost that eventually comes back to Council Tax payers.

But the another objective of the initiative is to give a new lease of life to items that may not be working but can be successfully repaired and go on to have a useful future.

This can save money by removing the need to purchase new.

Experts and enthusiasts undertake the repair or attempt to do so.

The Ludlow Repair Cafés started in October 2017 and now happens every four months with venues shared between the Ludlow Mascall Centre and Rockspring Community Centre.

No charge is made for repairs, but donations are requested to help cover venue hire and insurance costs.