Can North-Rhine Westphalia Repair Its Way to a World Record? Join the Campaign! In a world of fast consumption and ever-shorter product lifetimes, repair offers a simple way to keep products and resources in use for longer. Yet the skills, infrastructure and culture needed to repair are increasingly at risk of being lost. A new campaign in North-Rhein Westphalia (NRW), Germany wants to change that by bringing together thousands of individual repairs as part of a collective campaign and a world-record attempt. Bringing repair back Repairing broken or damaged goods used to be a normal part of everyday life. Buying something new wasn’t always the go-to option, and many people had the tools and skills to fix things themselves. Over time, mass production, technological change and shifting lifestyles have changed that. Today, it is often easier to throw something away and buy a newer version. But this convenience comes with hidden costs: depleted natural resources, unnecessary emissions and huge amounts of unrecyclable waste. There is another way, however, that we used to know: ask your grandparents! Investing in a repair culture Repair can be a skill challenge, a fun activity to do together and a way to save money and resources. Whether we repair something ourselves, join a local repair initiative or open workshop, or use a professional repair service, keeping products in use is often a better alternative to replacing them. The Repair World Record NRW Together with repair initiatives, businesses and people across the region, we want to repair 4,000 items in one month and break the current British record of 3,177 repaired items, set in 2024. The initiative is part of the Circular Week 2026 and will culminate in a big finale: on 31 October, the Repair & Share Festival in Wuppertal will bring the repair community together for a Repair Café XXL and a live countdown to the world record. Hosted by the FAB Region Bergisches Städtedreieck and the Netzwerk Reparatur Wuppertal, the festival invites repair enthusiasts and initiatives from across NRW to join the celebration. Find out more about the Repair & Share Festival. Want to contribute to the world record? Then simply join in! Dig out that broken lamp, repair your favourite piece of clothing, fix your bike or finally tackle that household appliance you’ve been meaning to fix. Use your skills, your tools or the support of a repair initiative near you. Once you’ve completed a repair, simply go to reparatur.fab-bergisch.org and register it. It takes less than a minute – and every repair counts. Will you be part of it? Because the real goal isn’t just to set a world record, but to show that repair can become normal again. You’re a repair initiative that wants to participate? Get in touch with reparatur@cscp.org. For all other questions, please contact Nils Kreft.