An EU directive which makes it easier for Irish consumers who want to have their washing machines, phones, vacuum cleaners and other household goods repaired rather than replaced when they break down should be good news for both the environment and for our wallets.
The goal of the EU repair directive, which came into force late last month, is to make product lifespans longer and quickly reduce the need for the premature replacement of goods.
It is an entirely common-sense idea and, if it works, it will help to combat a needless mountain of waste that grows by tens of million of tonnes each year.
It will also lessen the environmental impact the manufacture of those goods has on the planet as more repairs mean less products will be sold and made.
And, obviously, if someone can get their washing machine repaired for a reasonable sum rather than having to replace it for a less reasonable one, consumers win too.
Anyone who has ever experienced the misery of spending €500 on a washing machine only for it to develop a fault after two years and to be told by the person sent out to repair it that it can’t be done will be delighted with the news.
Under the new “right-to-repair” rules, makers of products in certain categories will have to offer a repair service if their goods develop faults outside the typical guarantee window.
Consumers will be able to request repairs directly from the makers at a reasonable price and in a reasonable time frame. And they will be given assistance in locating repair providers through a national repair platform linked to the wider European repair network.
A repair directory repairmystuff.ie is being developed to serve as the national repair platform.
When announcing implementation of the directive, Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke said the Government had “sought to strike the right balance between supporting consumers, encouraging sustainable economic activity and ensuring that businesses are not faced with unnecessary regulatory burdens. Repair should be an accessible, practical and affordable option for consumers, and these regulations help make that a reality.”
The Minister for the Environment, Darragh O’Brien, said the new regulations would be “important in helping to meet our climate goals by realigning how we produce, consume and value materials”.
He suggested they could help Ireland to “emerge as a European leader in circular economy innovation – designing out waste, reducing our reliance on the extraction of raw materials to reduce emissions to secure a cleaner, fairer, lower‑carbon future”.
Ambition v reality
But questions remain to be answered.
It is not entirely clear what will be considered “reasonable” by those offering repairs and by those seeking them. And it remains to be seen what volume of products will still be deemed impossible to repair, directive or no directive.
The reality is too many of the products we rely on are built by multinational corporations that are often motivated at least as much in profits that enrich their shareholders as they are in giving their customers satisfaction
If their main aim is to manufacture products at the cheapest possible cost before selling them at the highest possible price, there is always the danger of an impact on quality and the use of cheaper parts. If those machines break down or fail sooner rather than later, planned obsolescence forces people to buy again.
So it is a win-win for them.
Kilian Kaminski, co-founder of refurbished marketplace refurbed.ie, says this is a key question that has yet to be answered.
“I don’t think the current right-to-repair legislation goes far enough for three main reasons,” he told The Irish Times earlier this week
“The first is price,” he said. “The legislation talks about repairs being reasonably priced, but it isn’t clear what ‘reasonable’ actually means.
“The second is that there are still loopholes around repair blockers, including situations involving intellectual property rights. And the third is scope. We need clear requirements that products are designed to be repairable in the first place.”
He pointed out that “repairable” means “more than giving consumers the legal right to have a product repaired”. He suggested that products would have to “be designed in a way that means it can actually be repaired”.
He pointed to modular design in smartphones. “Ideally, if one part of a device, like the camera, needs replacing or upgrading you should be able to replace that individual component rather than having to replace the entire phone.”
He said some niche phone makers adopt this approach but it needs to be more mainstream. “Modular designs make it much easier to keep a device in use for longer because you can upgrade individual components as technology develops.
“That’s why right to repair and eco-design need to work hand in hand. The right to repair gives consumers the right to seek a repair, but eco-design is what determines whether that repair is realistically possible.”
He said another element to consider was software.
“There’s no reason why a phone shouldn’t be able to function for 10–15 years with a new battery and the ability to repair issues with the hardware. But manufacturers repeatedly make phones obsolete by not providing security updates to old software.”
He also pointed to software locks and “things like part pairing, where replacement components can be linked to a particular device and the phone can give the consumer warnings when it recognises that a part is not the original one. These practices make perfectly functional devices obsolete, forcing the upgrade culture cycle to continue and increasing e-waste.”
Kaminski warned that AI “is only going to make this issue worse. On-device AI requires newer processors and a lot of storage, so consumers who want the latest AI capabilities in their tech will be forced to buy new to access it.”
Apart from the need for the hardware and software used by phone makers to be future-proofed, consumers also have a role to play. One of the biggest issues facing the refurbished market is that there are not enough used devices coming back into the system.
“Demand for refurbished products is growing, but European consumers are still keeping a lot of their old phones and electronics in drawers rather than returning them, creating a shortage,” Kaminiski warned.
Even when consumers do get rid of their old devices, they don’t necessarily enter the right part of the circular economy. A working phone might be put into a general electronic-waste container and end up being treated as something to recycle.
But if it was still working, or only needed one small component replaced, that’s a huge loss of value and lifespan.
“We are effectively skipping the ‘reuse’ part of the cycle and going straight to ‘recycling’, believing that is the right thing to do,” Kaminiski said.
“We need better education and better collection systems that allow devices to be assessed first, so that products that can be reused or refurbished and stay in circulation, and only those that genuinely can’t be reused go to recycling.”
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