In a culture where make do and mend has been replaced by the impulse to throw away, a popular new concept is encouraging people to repair their broken possessions.

Repair cafés not only reduce the volume of waste going to landfill, they also build community, according to Michelle Fisher who established a cafe in Melbourne's inner west two years ago.

The movement that began in Amsterdam has now spread to Perth with a location in Victoria Park joining more than 1,300 cafes worldwide.

"It connects neighbours with neighbours and values and skills we all have and can share," Ms Fisher told ABC Radio Perth.

"People bring their stuff along, they sit down with a volunteer fixer that has specialist skills and he or she teaches them how to repair their things, or unscrew things or have a look under the bonnet to see how things look inside."

The Melbourne Repair Café operates out of a range of coffee shops and community centres and there is no charge to take part.

Broken items range from Moroccan banjos to dolls with decapitated heads and "a little girl's cuckoo clock where the cuckoo didn't come out anymore".

Howard (left) fixed a broken coffee grinder at the Melbourne Repair Cafe. ( RN: Michael Mackenzie )

"Some [volunteers] are current tradies, some are retired," Ms Fisher explained.

"We have engineers of various sorts, we have sewers, teachers, sustainability experts and backyard tinkers.

"No money changes hands. We invite donations, but the service is free, it is a gift of the heart and hands."

Most things can be fixed

The International Repair Café Foundation was formed in 2010, but Ms Fisher said the desire to keep appliances out of landfill had gained momentum.

"I think the ABC's War on Waste has really lifted awareness around the need to consume and throw away less," she said.

In Perth, the Repair Lab in Victoria Park had its first successful day of operation on October 8, while a monthly repair café in North Perth will launch on October 22.

Repair Lab organiser Flavia Pardini said the first event had exceeded all expectations.

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"We had 55 items come through ... some couldn't be fixed but most could and we had more than 100 people come through the lab," she said.

"You do get those electronic items like keyboards and computers, but we also get umbrellas — items that people like to use but that break down and you don't know what do with it."

Ms Pardini said people who came to the event gained not only a newly functional item, but confidence and a connection with their neighbours.

"It's the skill set we have lost and also that confidence. Sometimes you need to open something up but you feel intimidated," she said.

"There is another aspect that we saw very clearly last Saturday and that was community coming together and doing things ... connecting."

Bringing back a lost culture

Elle Gonzalez-Skuja, who is coordinating the upcoming North Perth event said they already had many volunteer fixers and plenty of interest.

"I think people are just fed up with living in a throwaway culture and I think people are concerned about the amount of items that are going into landfill," she said.

"It's really quite overwhelming that 6,000kg of fashion waste goes into landfill every 10 minutes in Australia.

"We are bringing back that culture of repair that we are losing."