For the past few years, environmental organisations, repair businesses and citizen activists from around the world have had enough of a system that makes repairing electronics particularly hard and contributes to million tonnes of e-waste being sent to landfills every year.
Grassroots repair cafés and restart parties are providing repairs for products where there is no longer any viable commercial model and independent repairers are doing their best with sometimes very little access to spare parts and repair information.
But these efforts have their limits when the system itself seems hostile to support repair and reuse.
This is why several European organisations representing community repair groups, social economy actors, self repair and any citizen who would like to advocate for their right to repair launched early September, a campaign to maintain pressure on European policy makers to adopt ambitious legislative measures supporting and encouraging repair.
Indeed, at the EU level, there’s a real opportunity for change. Earlier this year, new regulations were adopted as part of Ecodesign requiring manufacturers of products such as washing machines and televisions, to ensure access to repair manuals, some spare parts and to design them in a way to simplify disassembly for repair.
Now, we are urgently asking for:
- Ecodesign for all products including smartphones
- National registers for independant repairers
- A repairability index to inform consumers
To do so, we need your support! Sign up here (link to the action network newsletter form) if you want to stay up to date with what’s going on with the campaign and how you can get involved or contact us at info@repair.eu if you’d like to become a member with your organisation.