enfinium, the leading energy-from-waste operator, has today awarded the Folkestone Repair Café, located in Kent, £1,300 of funding to support its work fixing household items, reducing waste and saving local families money.
The Folkestone Repair Café, part of the Sunflower House charitable trust and International Repair Café Network, was established in 2022. Meeting once a month, the team of 8 volunteers have helped fix over 250 items to date across 24 Repair Café events. The most common repairs include hoovers and garden trimmers, as well as electronics such as stereos or radios.
The grant funding announced today will cover the Café’s operating costs and enable them to purchase new equipment and spare parts to boost the range of repairs they offer. In addition to offering repairs, the Café also teaches visitors how to undertake their own basic repairs, including changing fuses and cleaning blocked appliances.
Repairing items reduces the amount of waste sent to landfill as well as avoiding the carbon emissions in manufacturing replacements. For example, maintaining a single television for an additional 7 years has been found to save the equivalent of 657kg CO2.1
Folkestone Repair Café is the second to receive funding from the Fund so far since enfinium launched its £60,000 ‘Repair Café Support Fund’ in March 2024. The Fund was set up to support cafés within a 30 mile radius of one of enfinium’s facilities in Kent, North Wales, West Yorkshire or the West Midlands. Eligible Repair Cafés can apply for funding of up to £1,500 per annum before the 31 May deadline.
If you would like to learn more about the Repair Cafés Support Fund, or apply for funding, please visit the project website Repair Café or email communityfunding@enfinium.co.uk.
Philip Curds, Head of ESG and Sustainability at enfinium, said: “Folkstone Repair Café are a huge asset to the local community. By enabling free repairs of common household items, local people can save money and cut down the amount of waste they send to landfill. We are thrilled to be awarding the Folkestone Repair Café funding from the enfinium Repair Café Support Fund.”
Jon O’Connor, Chair of Trustees, said: “We are delighted to have been selected as one of the first recipients of enfinium’s Repair Café Support Fund. This new funding will empower us to broaden our impact in working with Folkestone’s community to help reduce their climate footprint through repair and reuse while saving money and fostering a passion for repair.
We are so proud of all the work we do in the community – this project is about much more than just repairing broken items. For example, recently, we repaired an old Walkman for a local resident which meant she was able to hear her mums voice for the first time in 20 years since she had passed. This is all about people coming together to do something positive.”
The Folkestone Repair Café takes place on the second Sunday of every month at the Sunflower House in Folkestone from 9:30 to 12:30, and is free and open to all.
ENDS
Application process
To apply for the Repair Café Support Fund, please visit the project website Repair Café, where the application criteria are available and the application forms can be downloaded.
Statistical Information
1 Öko-Institut e.V., “Economic and environmental impacts of extending the durability of electrical and electronic equipment”, 2020, p6.
About enfinium
enfinium is a leading UK energy from waste operator with four operational sites in the UK, in West Yorkshire, Kent and Flintshire, and two in construction. enfinium diverts 2.3 million tonnes of unrecyclable waste from climate-damaging landfill, putting it to good use by turning it into home grown energy, enough to power 500,000 UK homes. enfinium’s ambition is to transform its facilities into local ‘decarbonisation hubs’ powered by the millions of tonnes of unrecyclable waste the UK will produce for decades to come. Using existing energy from waste infrastructure, enfinium could contribute to heat networks, produce electrolytic hydrogen, or use carbon capture technology to provide durable, high quality carbon removals which will be critical for the UK to achieve net zero by 2050. For more on enfinium, please visit www.enfinium.co.uk.
