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A Dutch campaign group is calling on the public to stop throwing away old clothes and household goods and try to mend them instead.

SIRE, which brings together advertising, publishing and communications agencies, hopes that the public "", the NOS public broadcaster reports.

"There was a time when we used to do our own repairs, but now we're increasingly taking the easy way out and replacing things that don't work properly," SIRE Director Lucy van der Helm told NOS.

"Recycling gets a lot of attention, which is good, but very few people realise that repairs are even better. If we all repaired more, we'd need to recycle less," she said.

SIRE estimates that each person in the Netherlands throws away an average of 18kg of electrical appliances a year, not to mention 16kg of toys and furniture and 15kg of textiles, and will only consider repairing an item if replacing it costs more than 100 euros.

The campaign is running television, internet and radio adverts, along with the social media hashtag , but doesn't simply want to lecture the public.

SIRE has also set up a and, failing that, a database of workshops where you can get them fixed nationwide.

Ruth Mugge is professor of Design for Sustainable Consumer Behaviour at Delft University of Technology, and says she supports the campaign because research shows people get a "great deal of satisfaction from carrying out repairs themselves".

"," she told the Adformatie trade magazine.

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Social media reaction so far has been supportive of both the campaign and its aims, although there are complaints that electrical goods get binned because .

SIRE, which was founded in 1967, has often captured the public imagination with its efforts to raise awareness of issues like loneliness among the elderly and online bullying.

It has not shied away from controversy either - most notably with a call to "let boys be boys" in 2017, which proposed that .

Earlier this year it made headlines with its , which tried to get people to behave better in shops, on the road and across social media, after polling data suggested the public are concerned about hardening social attitudes.

Reporting by Martin Morgan

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