VOLUNTEERS in Calne are encouraging residents to bring in broken household items that need fixing to save them from being thrown away.

They are working at the town's first Repair Café where volunteer repairers from Calne Men’s Shed, together with the Repair Academy, and Calne town councillor Heather Canfer helped mend items.

They included a pasta maker, a doorbell, hair straighteners, a couple of radios and a piece of clothing all headed for the bin.

The Waste Education Team at Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, funded by Wiltshire Council, organised the café in the Town Hall.

Calne’s volunteer repairers offered general repairs of small household items to make them usable again, including bikes, small electrical items and sewing repairs, for a suggested donation to help with running costs.

A spokeswoman said: "Broken items can often be replaced for not much more than it costs to fix them but this means we are throwing away the resources used to make the item, the energy used to make it and as there is no ‘away’ we have to find somewhere to put it."

"In Wiltshire it costs around £5 million to send our rubbish to landfill - approximately 15% of our rubbish - that’s a lot of money that could be spent on public services."

Calne Town Council and local groups are also determined to reduce plastic waste in the town and have signed up to the Surfers Against Sewerage Plastic Free Communities scheme.

They recently held a successful launch event to share tips and skills on how to reduce single-use plastic at home which attracted over 80 people.

They are also approaching local businesses to see if they can help reduce unnecessary disposable plastic in the town.

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s Waste Education Team educates and engages communities across Wiltshire encouraging residents to reduce, reuse and recycle more of their household rubbish.

Follow the Waste Team on twitter @SlimBinsWilts and Wiltshire Waste Watchers on Facebook and Pinterest.