COMMENT.

Built-in obsolescence is not just something that inevitably seems to affect us all, sooner or later!

Historically, it is a cunning design concept employed by manufacturers to ensure that products will wear out – pack-up, go kaput – after an allotted time. The broken goods then need to be replaced. This helps to keep the cash flow going to manufacturers, of course; but it does not help our struggling planet.

This is why Ledbury’s Repair Cafe, run by volunteers, is such a good concept, because it is a challenge to our

throw-away culture and, because of a make do and mend ethos, it helps to conserve precious resources.

The idea started in Holland, and Repair Cafes are still not common in the UK – there are only around 20 or so. Ledbury can give itself a big pat on the back for being in the vanguard, and it is to be hoped that a promising start will continue.

Not everything can be repaired, but a great deal can, whether or not that was the game plan of greedy manufacturers.

However, the rise of the Repair Cafe movement does raise a few interesting points. For decades there have been rumours, true or not, that is is possible to make everlasting car tyres; rumours that a working hydrogen car was made as far back as the 1980s, but was locked away; rumours that the oil industry has, on occasions, put the squeeze on Governments looking at alternative energy. All this may be nonsense, of course; but if there is only a grain of truth to any of it, it would show how business interests can hamper, not assist, human progress.