Repair Cafes: A Case Study in Data Collection and Analysis
Charter, Martin and Li, Junxiong and Pearce, John (2025) Repair Cafes: A Case Study in Data Collection and Analysis. In: Handbook of Circular Economy and Sustainability Global Leadership. Springer, Singapore, pp. 1-21. ISBN 978-981-99-8143-4.
Repair Cafes are community workshops that aim to facilitate the repair of products. There are 3652 repair cafes worldwide that are registered on the Repair Cafe International Federation (RCIF) website and an estimated 425 in the UK (Postma, Personal communication regarding the estimated 425 repair cafés in the UK. Note: Ongoing research indicates that numbers may be higher, 2025). Repair cafes collect data for various reasons; however, not all gather data. This chapter presents a case study of the approach taken by Farnham Repair Cafe (FRC) in the UK to collect and analyze data on the repairability of products using Microsoft Power BI and Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio). The data collection and analysis were completed in two phases in 2020 and 2022–24. A dashboard was developed that enabled the analysis of 3848 products received by FRC that resulted in over 2610 completed repairs as at September 2024. The dashboard was initially developed for use by FRC Trustees for management information purposes but has recently been used to provide specific information to repairers. The importance of establishing clear rules for data entry into a Microsoft Excel sheet, which sits behind the dashboard, has been particularly highlighted during the development of the dataset. The chapter highlights the background issues related to repair cafes and data collection, the data collection process used by FRC, and lessons learnt, conclusions, and recommendations that may be useful for other repair cafes and related organizations.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4375-6591 and Pearce, John
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