What They Say
Bloomberg published an article on the topic of the right to repair. According to the site, quoting consumer groups watching the space, twenty-seven US states considered such bills in 2021. More than half have already been voted down or dismissed.
America’s smartphone habit alone eats up some 23.7 million tons of raw material, according to a report from U.S. PIRG. The consumer group estimated that people holding onto their smartphones for an extra year would be the emissions equivalent of taking 636,000 cars off the road.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Apple have used lawyers and lobbyists to oppose proposals. TechNet, a group that represents some large firms, has also lobbied.
Despite this, activity to promote the concept is still being promoted. Consumer groups are said to see Apple as particularly unbending and protective over its devices.
The scale of the issue is that the report suggests that 10 to 15% of an education district’s devices need repairs during a typical school year and one district in Long Island has 13,000 iPads in circulation, so faces very high repair costs, but faces double the cost if it has to replace rather than repair them.
What We Think
As I’ve said I’m conflicted on this topic. I was recently listening to a radio interview that was about a frustration with disposable appliances, rather than repairable. A spokesman for Beko (if I remember correctly) said that the firm had found that using a plastic part (which was not repairable) in a washing machine was much less likely to leak than the metal part (which was repairable) that it replaced. It’s hard he said, to deliver the same reliability with repairability and consumers cared more about reliability. (BR)
To find an image for this story, I couldn’t resist this classic piece of poor stock photography (no longer available as far as I can see). Spot the deliberate error!
