More than 100 tonnes of electronics, bikes and food has been saved from the bin thanks to a community project.

The Wantage Mix community space on Mill Street is on a mission to stop food and household items from going to landfill.

With the help of volunteers, the community space hosts a repair café and laptop rescue service, a community fridge and larder, and it also holds sustainable events and upcycling projects including clothes swaps.

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Soon Sustainable Wantage will be hitting the milestone of saving 100 tonnes of waste across all their projects since they started counting back in 2016.

The first repair café was held in 2017 just twice a year in spring and autumn, but due to its popularity it is now open to save the publics broken electronics twice a month.

The repair café has sustainability experts on hand to fix the preloved electronics including Jim Lidbury, who is now retired but started his career fixing aeroplanes, and Elwin Coulson who is great at fixing things and works in IT.

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Volunteer Jo Harvey helped to start Sustainable Wantage, and over the years she has seen the repair café volunteers fix everything from hair straighteners and sewing machines to hoovers.

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She said: “We can’t fix everything, but we can generally fix about 70 per cent of the stuff that comes in.”

She added: “Knowing we can fix seven out of ten things that people bring in, makes you realise that essentially seven out of ten things could be going in the bin when they don’t need to be.

“It is a definite win if you can save people money, by preventing them from going and buying new things.”

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 Over lockdown when schools were shut, the volunteers saved hundreds of laptops as part of a scheme to fix laptops to help children learn from home.

The initiative saw 571 laptops and tablets saved equating to 1.6 tonnes of electrical items.

A big chunk of the 100 tonnes of waste saved from the bin is food waste.

The Mix community space has a community larder and a community fridge which sees between 30 and 60 people attend when the services open.

Due to the cost-of-living crisis Ms Harvey has seen an increase in the number of people using their community fridge and larder.

She said: “At the community larder we are up to 138 members.

“It is people who need to come because they need the money, but people also like to give themselves a cooking challenge and prevent food from going to waste.”

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This story was written by Rebecca Whittaker, she joined the team in 2019 as a multimedia reporter.

Rebecca covers education and news in Abingdon and Wantage.

Get in touch with her by emailing: Rebecca.Whittaker@newquest.co.uk or calling 07824524333

Follow her on Twitter @RebecWhitt

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