The Return of Repair
In the decades that followed the Second World War, households in industrialised countries gradually stopped mending things. Darning socks, resoling shoes and replacing the valves in a radio had once been ordinary domestic skills, and most high streets supported a cobbler, a tailor and an electrical repairer. As mass production drove down the price of new goods, however, the calculation changed. When a replacement toaster cost less than an hour of a technician's labour, repairing the old one made little economic sense, and the small workshops that had relied on such jobs began to close. By the end of the century, throwing away a faulty appliance had become so normal that many consumers no longer considered repair to be an option at all. Mending, once a sign of thrift, had come to be seen as old-fashioned or even as a mark of poverty.
Manufacturers were not passive observers of this shift. Products were increasingly assembled with glue rather than screws, sealed in casings that could not be opened without specialist tools, and built from components that were not sold separately. Some companies declined to share diagnostic software or circuit diagrams with independent technicians, arguing that doing so would compromise safety or reveal commercially sensitive designs. Critics countered that the real motive was to steer customers towards buying new models. Whatever the intention, the effect was clear: even consumers who wanted to fix their possessions often found it impractical or impossible.
Over the past fifteen years, however, repair has staged an unexpected comeback. Volunteer-run 'repair cafés', where people bring broken items to be fixed free of charge by skilled amateurs, have spread from a handful of European towns to several thousand locations worldwide. Online, video tutorials showing how to replace a phone screen or rewire a lamp attract millions of views, and websites that publish step-by-step repair guides have built up enormous libraries contributed largely by their users. Surveys suggest that the motivation is only partly financial. Many participants say they are frustrated by waste, and a surprising number describe the satisfaction of restoring an object to working order as the main attraction. Some cafés now keep records of what they fix, and the data they gather on common faults have been shared with researchers studying how long products last.
Legislators have begun to take notice. Several jurisdictions have introduced so-called 'right to repair' rules, which oblige manufacturers of certain products, typically large household appliances, to make spare parts available for a fixed number of years after a model is discontinued. Some rules also require repair manuals to be published and prohibit designs that prevent batteries from being replaced. One region has gone further by introducing a repairability score, a number from one to ten that must be displayed at the point of sale alongside the price. Early evidence indicates that the score does influence purchasing decisions, and that some manufacturers have redesigned products in order to achieve a higher rating.
Economists are divided on how much difference such measures will make. Supporters point out that extending the life of a washing machine or laptop by even two or three years substantially reduces the energy and raw materials consumed per year of use, since most of the environmental cost of an electronic device is incurred while it is being manufactured rather than while it is in operation. Sceptics respond that repair remains labour-intensive, and in countries where wages are high, the cost of a technician's time will continue to make replacement the cheaper choice for many goods. They also warn that guaranteeing spare parts for a decade may raise prices, as firms will have to manufacture and store components that may never be used.
There are also questions about whether consumers really want long-lasting products. In many categories, particularly clothing and personal electronics, people replace items not because they have stopped working but because they have gone out of fashion or been overtaken by models with new features. Such cycles are deliberately reinforced by marketing, with annual product launches that present minor changes as major advances. A phone that can be repaired indefinitely holds little appeal for a buyer who intends to upgrade every two years regardless. For this reason, some researchers argue that the repair movement's most important contribution may be cultural rather than economic: by making the inner workings of everyday objects visible again, it encourages people to value them differently.
The second-hand market offers a partial answer to this dilemma. A device that is repaired and resold allows its first owner to upgrade while keeping the object itself in use, and specialist refurbishing companies have grown rapidly in response to demand for cheaper, reliable used electronics. For this model to work, however, devices must be designed so that they can be opened, tested and fixed efficiently at scale. In that sense, the interests of the environmentally minded consumer, the refurbishing business and the legislator are beginning to converge. Whether manufacturers will embrace this convergence or resist it remains, for now, an open question.
