It's a busy Saturday morning in the auditorium of St. Mark Hope and Peace Lutheran Church at 3800 Troost Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. There is an African drum class on the second floor, with loud, syncopated beats bleeding through the ceiling.
On the first floor, more than 30 people are waiting as volunteers use screwdrivers, hammers or sewing machines to repair their electronics, home goods or clothes. Most of the work is free.
In line is 39-year-old Eliza Cantlay who has brought in some shirts to be sewn together, as well as a bicycle she acquired from the back of a friend's garage. Many people bring in things that have sentimental value. But for Cantlay, this is the beginning of her relationship with this bicycle.
“It doesn't yet (have sentimental value), but I'm sure we will build some memories together,” Cantlay said. “I have not even actually been on the bike yet.”
This is one of a dozen Repair Cafes held over the last year. The fix-it sessions are sponsored by Re.Use.Full, a Kansas City nonprofit that is dedicated to raising awareness about sustainability, and a smarter approach to waste disposal, as landfills reach their maximum capacity.
This isn’t the first time Cantlay, a professional organizer, has been to the Repair Cafe. She brings things here from her clients’ homes as she’s helping them declutter or helping them avoid throwing away a broken lamp that will ultimately end up in a landfill.
Repairing, repurposing and reusing
Alex Allen is a strategy and marketing consultant during the week and a volunteer bike repair specialist on weekends. Intently focused, barely taking his eyes off Cantlay’s gear shifts and chain, he said he was surprised to find the bike in such good condition.
“The tires actually hold air,” said Allen as he applied lubricant to clean the bike’s chain.
Allen is committed to the mission of Re.Use.Full. It’s about repurposing still functional stuff, and decreasing landfill capacity. He said if he’d found Cantlay’s bike in a dumpster, he'd have retrieved it himself and fixed it anyway.
“I would get out and put it in my car,” he said enthusiastically.
Re.Use.Full Repair Cafes are pop ups that appear at various locations on both sides of the state line. Organizers' current objective is to save 25 tons from reaching landfills in 2025.
Leslie Scott founded the nonprofit in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, taking in things such as toys and clothes, serving as a donation bank, distributing directly to families.
She calls herself a proponent of the circular economy, the increasingly popular concept that is informing governments, businesses, activists and policymakers as a way to promote global and local sustainability. The sweeping idea means different things to different people.
At the Repair Cafe, it means taking broken things and fixing them so they can be used. On this specific Saturday, Scott estimates the workshops will have kept about 300 pounds of material out of a landfill.
Scott realizes not everyone buys the repair and reuse mantra. In a survey by the professional services network Deloitte, 60% of recipients said that they refused to repair broken items due to high repair costs, while 32% said it was difficult to find repair shops.
“We want to make these events as sustainable as possible,” Scott said. “We shopped for our tools and things at (second-hand shop) Habitat Restore. We have some of it donated.”
“We heard from a lot of people”
In 2022, the organization began hosting “Un-Dumpster Days,” in which they partnered with other nonprofits to collect gently-used items and get them out to people who needed them.
Two years later, she established the Repair Cafe. The idea emerged after a heated debate over a proposed 270-acre landfill south of Missouri Highway 150 in Raymore, Missouri. Residents of the 1,300-home neighborhood, on the south edge of the proposed landfill, were the loudest opponents.
Scott said the pushback was intense.
“We heard from people,” she said. “They don't want one in their backyard. Nobody wants a landfill in their backyard.”
Former Missouri Gov. Mike Parson ultimately signed a bill that killed the landfill proposal.
Scott said the widespread awareness and engagement around the landfill controversy opened the door for her to talk about our reckless consumer habits. As well as appliances, electronics, furniture and knick- knacks, Scott discovered most of what people throw out is clothes.
“Clothes are really one of the main things that are filling up our landfills,” she said.
That's why every Repair Cafe has seamstresses with sewing machines, bringing new life to old apparel.
“Fast fashion,” she said, “ is killing our planet. The more we can help people keep their clothing in use, you know, the better.”
Durable goods, or products with a long lifespan, end up in a landfill at a higher rate than nondurable goods – products that deteriorate over a short period of time – 25.6% compared to 19.9%, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“This data drives home the important role that recycling, donation, refurbishing and repair of all material types, particularly durable goods, can play in extending the life of landfills,” said Jonathan Klusmeyer, spokesperson for EPA Region 7.
A 2024 study by the Mid-America Regional Council examined the area's landfill capacity. Indications are, according to the study led by Burns & McDonnell, that the area has a range of 19 to 37 years before it runs out of landfill capacity.
Regional landfills in Missouri are at 28% capacity. In Kansas, they're at 72%, according to the study.
The only operating landfills in the metro today are the Courtney Ridge Landfill in Sugar Creek, Missouri, and the Johnson County Landfill in Shawnee, Kansas. Older landfills in southeast Kansas City and Lee’s Summit have already been closed.
MARC’s Solid Waste Program Manager Dianna Bryant said efforts like Repair Cafe’s were having an impact.
“I think it's made a difference because it shows people that there's another choice and that we could do this more often,” she said, “and choose to do something differently than the easiest thing, which is to just put it at the curb.”
Bryant said once local landfills are full, material will need to be hauled to the closest available facility. On the Missouri side that’s 60 miles away in Warrensburg or 89 miles to Sedalia. She said as a result, the added transit and labor costs could mean higher taxes or higher costs for trash collection.
The St. Joseph News-Press reported in November 2024 on their increasing trash problem. “The last five years, waste disposal at the landfill has skyrocketed by nearly 50% compared to the previous 20 years,” according to the paper.
Bryant said the costs of this growth gets passed down to the city.
“The St. Joseph landfill recently raised their fees from $40 to $150 per ton,” Bryant said, "for dump trucks and large transfer haulers."
Adverse environmental impact
Landfills have long been shown to contribute to global warming.
Landfills produce something called landfill gas, which is roughly half methane and half carbon dioxide. Methane is the culprit — it’s a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere 28 times more effectively than carbon dioxide.
Landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions related to human activity in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA reports that landfills were responsible for 14.3% of methane emissions in 2021, the equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from nearly 23.1 million gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year.
“Addressing these high methane sources and mitigating persistent landfill emissions offers a strong potential for climate benefit,” Dr. Dan Cusworth, Carbon Mapper Program Scientist writes in reference to EPA statistics. "The ability to precisely identify leaks is an efficient way to make quick progress on methane reduction at landfills, which could be critical for slowing global warming.”
Back at St. Marks, Eliza Cantlay’s bike is done being repaired and she’s gleefully circling the church parking lot.
“This bike feels awesome, and the settings are just right,” she said, emphasizing how much more awesome it feels because she's saved it from a landfill.
An earlier version of this story said ReUseFull could fix TV's. Volunteers are not equipped to fix TV's at this time, but they can fix many other electronics.
