Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...and also now, Repair?
Apparently we now have the 'right to repair'....didn't we always?
Last week, Apple released a program designed to help customers more easily repair their phones. Not surprisingly, confirmed by a report to Microsoft, there are climate and carbon benefits to be able to repair, rather than replace your phone it seems!
I had read a little about the ‘right to repair’ movement before these announcements, and certainly it should be obvious to most of us that getting parts and knowing what to do to effect a home-repair of many devices is difficult, but I hadn’t really thought about whether it was possible or legal. Apparently it has been both impossible and illegal, even if you are super techie, and handy with a miniature screwdriver.
So these developments seem good, and they are about to be more widespread. But I confess I am mostly glad that it will bring more repair-excitement to other people.
It’s not that I’m not handy (I am currently in the middle of refinishing my own kitchen cabinets I’ll have you know! And I have fixed and installed a number of things in our poor, elderly house), but it’s just that I am not mechanically-interested. For example, I am not the kind of person inclined to take things apart just to see ‘how they work’.
But the news this week, definitely made me think for a minute, because it’s not that I want to throw things away when they break either.
For example, in theory, I could change my car’s own oil. In practice, you probably don’t want me doing this. (I just picture us having to take a lot of Dawn Detergent to the driveway.) But I don’t have to do this myself because there are lots of vehicle-repair professionals to help me either with routine maintenance or with fixing things when broken. For the most part, I can take my car to any mechanic - I don’t have to send it back to Honda.
Similarly, our mower wouldn’t work this year. It turns out that we know someone who could repair it though, and get this - he likes doing that kind of thing (?!?). And of course, we paid him for parts and his time. I feel like this is a win-win. We get a repaired mower (which is old, and therefore polluting, but probably still less sunk carbon than ditching it and buying a new one for now), and he gets to earn money doing something he enjoys.
But this is only true with more expensive items at the moment (except phones, which is now changing). I’m worried about the trend towards ‘throw away’ culture for our cheaper products.
It’s not acceptable, nor win-win, to take your toaster or coffee pot to someone to fix for example. Our coffee pot gave out the other week, and since it was not very expensive to buy (we are not DIY-espresso-machiato-half-foamed-with-flavorings kind of coffee people) it would be cheaper to buy a new one than to take it somewhere to get it repaired. Even larger appliances like fridges and washing machines are getting to a place where repair professionals will sometimes advise against repair from a cost perspective.
The obvious answer to this is to make products more expensive so that it IS cheaper to repair than replace (I mean, you don’t take your car to the landfill when the window gets stuck). But then a new fridge or even a coffee pot becomes out of reach for a much wider range of people, even if it better reflects the true cost of production, including the environmental cost.
But….what if we make it more acceptable for us to buy reliable refurbished products? The tech world already has this to some degree, but it’s often from the manufacturer itself (e.g. Microsoft selling refurbished Microsoft items - presumably because other people are not allowed to repair them!).
I’d like to see a half of Best Buy stocked with refurbished products, or be able to buy products from Mom and Pop repair centers, including coffee pots and fridges. And phones. And to trade in my non-functioning products for a discount.
But for this, we need more than a right-to-repair movement.
No matter how much right I have, I am probably still not going to have the facility with the miniature screwdriver to repair my own phone. So we also need a ‘want-to-buy-repaired’ movement. The people who ARE able to repair things ought to be able to sell us reliable refurbished items that we are eager to purchase instead of buying new.
This requires then, a cultural shift not only on the part of the producers (those allowing repairs of their products), but us, the consumers. We need to be willing to repair stuff when we can, but also to trade-in and buy repaired stuff from other handier people when we can’t.
It is making me look harder for these options in my daily life.
Surely, there are already places and companies and movements we can build on here. Know of any I can highlight?
Your reflection reminds me that my father did such repairs for people, even printing invoices etc labeled Lippy's Repair Service so that he could get the trade discount for parts! His example/training served me well on my shipboard research expeditions where you had to repair your own gear.