How to make the right to repair worthwhile
18/06/21
Green Deal Monitor #8
The EU’s Green Deal sets out to transform the EU into a modern and resource efficient economy where economic growth is decoupled from resource use. Our Green Deal Monitor #8 looks at the benefits of increasing life cycles of products through better product design and refurbishments, and discusses what governments and the EU can do to encourage this.
Consumers increasingly ask for durable and repairable products
The Right to Repair is a key component of the Green Deal’s ambition to transform the European economy by decoupling economic growth from resource use. It is the concept that the consumer should have the right to repair his or her (electronics) devices rather than discarding them. Yet, while 77 percent of EU citizens say that they would rather repair their devices than replace them, few already do so and there has been little European legislation to date. The question is why? Why are we currently not repairing a greater share of our old electronics products? And why is there little legislation to date to incentivise repairs?
A toolbox to make repairs worthwhile
Some products are already worth repairing. The marginal cost of repair is relatively low and the demand from consumers is high. In a fully circular economy This should be the case for all product types. In order to incentivise an economic system where products are easy and cheap to repair and the demand for repair, second hand or refurbished products is high there are a few things governments and the EU do. They can use taxes or levies to nudge consumers to repair their devices, while producers, on their hand, can design products with repairability in mind in order to bring down the cost of repair. Business and government need to work in concert to make this shift happen.
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