Damage control: How repairability could help address the e-waste crisis

For years, the notorious Agbogbloshie dump in Accra, Ghana was one of the world’s most visible and unsettling reminders of the dark side of global consumerism: a vast and sprawling dumping ground for discarded electronics that toxified the soil and damaged the health of the many thousands of people scratching out a living there. 

In early 2021 the bulldozers moved in, clearing the site. But the relentless flow of discarded goods from the west continues, and whilst Agbogbloshie may now be closed for business, similar sites have sprung up along the Ghanaian coastline and indeed throughout the developing world: all of them damning, toxic indictments of a world drunk on a throwaway culture that plays fast and loose with resources and preys on our collective desire for new stuff.

And despite increasing numbers of manufacturers and engineers espousing and championing the principles of a circular economy - where waste is minimised and products are designed to be reused or recycled - it’s a trend that’s accelerating at a frightening rate.

In 2022 - according to the World Health Organisation - humans were responsible for the creation of an estimated 62 million tonnes of e-waste; reportedly enough to fill a bumper-to-bumper queue of trucks stretching around the equator. This is expected to increase to 82 million tonnes by 2030.

Meanwhile, less than a quarter of this waste is properly recycled, with the remainder thrown into landfill, burned for scrap or dismantled in the unregulated, informal recycling economy, exposing millions of workers to a catastrophic cocktail of toxic chemicals, heavy metals and plastics.

Prof Mark Miodownik

More effective recycling is clearly an important part of the solution. But with most metrics suggesting that current systems can’t cope (for example, the UN’s 2024 global e-waste monitor shows that e-waste is rising five times faster than compliant e-waste recycling), recycling alone is clearly not enough to turn the tide.

According to Mark Miodownik - professor of Materials and Society at UCL, director of The Institute of Making, and broadcaster - the maturity and scale of current recycling technologies means that a world where our devices are recycled at low environmental cost and the current models of consumption are maintained is nowhere near being realised. “These are very complex products, half of the periodic table is in your phone. So what are we going to do in the meantime as the climate gets hotter, as pollution gets worse, and there are eight billion people all wanting a washing machine, all wanting a hair wand?” he asked.  The answer - he believes - is a move back towards a world often nostalgically recollected by ageing grandparents, a world where things are built to last. “We have to move toward repair,” he said.  “There’s no alternative.”

Miodownik and others are encouraged that this cultural shift may now actually be gathering some momentum. According to figures from international group Open Repair Alliance, in the UK alone the number of repair cafes has increased by a third to 600 since 2023 and just last year an estimated 55,000 items were fixed. Meanwhile, television shows like The Repair Shop have helped romanticise the idea that it’s good to keep things in use.

It’s also something that’s born out by Miodownik’s own research, The Big Repair Project, a 2022 study carried out by UCL researchers that explored in detail UK consumers’ attitudes to repair.  “We talked to more than 6,000 people……and they are very enthusiastic,” he said. “They don’t want to buy the same thing again and again – particularly things that are utilities that have kind of reached a design plateau, like toasters and kettles. No one wants to keep buying the same washing machine. No one wants to buy the same fridge. They want those things to last a lifetime.”

Someone at the sharp end of this growing appetite is Kyle Wiens, CEO of US-based ifixit, the world’s biggest self-repair website. An outspoken advocate for the right to repair movement, Wiens - a software engineer - was inspired to create the site around 20 years ago following a fruitless online search for a manual that would help him repair his broken Apple laptop. “Our goal is to create an open source, central place for repair information for everything,” he told The Engineer.

Two decades on, a vast array of repair guides and growing web-traffic (last year one in twelve UK citizens used the site to fix something) tell their own story. But whilst it’s a promising sign, Wien says we can’t be too complacent about this nascent consumer trend: “On the one hand, right to repair as a movement is growing in momentum, and we’re raising awareness, but on the other hand, the throwaway society continues to grow at just an incredible rate.”

Wien’s site also gives him an interesting window on some of the nitty-gritty trends around repair, and one thing he’s noticed is that the appetite seems to vary from product area to product area: “For smartphone repair, we see very strong interest…but for vacuum repair, where we are comprehensive with service information for most vacuums, those pages get almost no traffic.”

Interestingly, this is often one of the simplest items to fix, a reminder that a shift to a world of repair isn’t the sole preserve of the tech-savvy: “Usually it’s the spring on the power switch that breaks and overwhelmingly that’s the reason people are chucking an entire vacuum because of the little two cent spring that maybe just came loose,” said Wiens. 

Kyle Wiens - CEO, ifixit.com

Against this mixed background, ultimately fickle consumer appetite alone is probably unlikely to drive the kind of economic change required, which is why Wiens and others now throw much of their energy into campaigning for regulatory and legislative change. 

Back in the UK, Fiona Dear is the co-director of the Restart Project, a London based campaigning group that helps people run pop-up repair events in their communities and which has become increasingly focused on the broader legislative picture. “There’s so much waste coming at us. We can’t try and fix it all. So there’s a lot more that needs to happen upstream,” she told The Engineer. 

There is already some legislation in place. The UK has had a fairly limited right to repair law - covering white goods and TVs - in place since July 2021, whilst a fresh EU right to repair directive covering a far broader range of products is expected to come into effect across the EU in July 2026.

According to Carys Thompson, head of Commercial and IP at law firm Shakespeare Martineau, EU developments in particular will have a significant implication for many manufacturers - particularly those either based in the EU or selling into EU markets.

One major impact, she told The Engineer, will be on warranties: “Manufacturers will exclude certain things from their warranty, like if you get it repaired by somebody else or you use third party spare parts, then your warranty becomes void. The EU legislation tries to prevent that, so they’re not allowed to try and circumvent the obligations by contractual provisions to that effect.”

Another important consideration - and one which will almost certainly affect UK firms - is the fact that the regulations could potentially impact any member of a manufacturer’s supply chain. “EU consumers will be able to approach anybody in that supply chain. So they all need to be aware that the obligation is not just on manufacturers,” she said. 

Meanwhile, with the UK government widely expected to strengthen its own regulations, all manufacturers are well advised to pay close attention to this shifting regulatory landscape. 

In response to all of this, manufacturers are - at the very least - paying lip service to the idea of repairability. Tech giants including Microsoft, Samsung, and Apple now all have self-service repair programmes, whilst phone manufacturer Fairphone and laptop maker Framework have built reasonably successful businesses around products designed to be repaired.

Wiens - who has a ringside seat on how open manufacturers are to the concept - said it’s a bit of a mixed picture, however. While some repair schemes are working well, others are guilty of what he terms “malicious compliance” whereby they introduce programmes that can be off-putting for many consumers. “Apple’s Repair programme requires you to rent 30 kilos of equipment from them. So that’s probably not going to happen,” he said. “GE has a software tool that you need to diagnose and repair their appliances and they charge $600 a year for access to that software….There’s no single appliance repair that would justify buying that.”  

Meanwhile, Craig Melson - associate director for Climate, Environment and Sustainability at technology sector trade body techUK - said that whilst the sector is broadly supportive of the concept it does have a number of concerns ranging from IP paranoia (and a desire to make it as difficult as possible for rivals to take your products apart) to concerns over the potential costs imposed by new rules. “The need to manufacture, distribute, store, make available all the spare parts for 10 years is super expensive and that obviously comes with huge costs for industry” he said. He added that the practicalities of keeping a wide range of parts available (some of which may never be required) could also present a logistical headache for many manufacturers.

Manufacturers are also concerned about the safety and durability implications of making repair easy, said Melson, from the risks presented by potentially hazardous counterfeit batteries to the impact on things like waterproofing standards. “People think ‘Oh, I used to be able to take the battery out and now I can’t’ but you can’t have a modular, easy to take apart phone and then meet the immersion protection ratings, which companies use to make sure their phones are waterproof.”

Wiens, however, doesn’t buy the durability argument. “Consumer electronics across the board are more glued together, more integrated than they’ve ever been, and that trend has been continuing,” he said.  “If you couldn’t replace the tires in your car, you wouldn’t buy a car.  But overwhelmingly, lithium batteries have become glued in, and that’s just not viable. Right now, the lifespan of a thing is the life of the shortest-lived component: the battery.”

“There are lots of ways to make a durable product that is also repairable, you just have to put some effort into it,” continued Wiens. “The lazy way to make a durable product is to glue it together. We know how to make waterproof watches that can be rated down to 100 meters and still have it be repairable with gaskets and tight tolerances. And instead of doing that, they stick the bottom on the top shell and glue it together. It’s just shoddy, cheap, easy design.”

Many believe that the key piece in the puzzle is creating legislation that doesn’t just compel manufacturers to abide by regulations but which also help drive the development of a professional repair economy - similar to that seen in the automotive or plumbing sectors – that actually creates some economic opportunity for them. “It’s urgent that we build up the infrastructure around repair and reuse measures,” said Fiona Dear. “There aren’t many efforts to build up a new kind of industry around this and that’s where we need legislation to nudge everyone in the right direction.”

Achieving this won’t be straightforward. As things stand , with the exception of high value items like cars, the economic case for a repair economy doesn’t add up. “For things like the toasters and kettles, because you can buy them new for £10- £15, they’d have to be offering repair for three pounds for it to make sense,” said Dear.

But Dear, Wiens, Miodownik and others all believe that with the right interventions it should be possible to stimulate the growth of a repair economy that benefits both consumers and manufacturers. 

“Repair incurs about 20 per cent VAT, so if you want an economic lever that you can press tomorrow to increase the jobs in the repair market by 20 per cent, you just get rid of VAT on repair,” said Miodownik.

Another potential lever, he believes, is the introduction of transparent re-use targets, where manufacturers are incentivised to build products that last: “We want these sets of products which we see as essential to any household, like the washing machine to last for at least 10 years. We want to create a landscape in which the manufacturers deliver that and therefore deliver lower environmental impact. But we want them to make money and the ones that can do it best to win.”

Miodownik said that many of the manufacturers he’s spoken to are enthusiastic about the idea, open to the idea of shifting to a model where they make their money from repair, and also open to making the changes to warranties. “If you say as a manufacturer I expect this washing machine to last ten years …you ought to be able to put a warranty for 10 years and there’s really no reason why the manufacturers are afraid of that. The big brands don’t seem to be afraid of changing the warranty law. If you mandated it by law, then it would cut out all the cheap people.”

For Kyle Wiens it’s about building a durable brand proposition. “I think that for a long time, there’s been a race to the bottom in terms of pricing. You have to compete on your brand fundamentals, and that includes longevity. Why would I spend more for a quality kettle? Well, because it won’t break every three years, and when it does break, and when the heating element does wear out, in 10 years, I know I can get a replacement, and that’s something that will last me for my entire lifetime. That’s what we should be manufacturing: durable goods and looking at lifespan in decades.”

It’s perhaps a forlorn, naïve hope to think that global manufacturing is even capable of shifting away from the consumerist models that continue to drive the growth of some of the world’s biggest companies. But ultimately - whatever the economic challenges - manufacturers will have no choice but to embrace a different model, believes Miodownik: “We only have to have a few years in a row where the environment gets really, really bad and at some point the customers are going to start saying “What have you been doing?” They won’t blame themselves for just buying crap. They’ll blame the manufacturers for producing the crap that they bought. And when that day happens you better have said we have this other product that is much more sustainable, and here’s our plan.” 

Prof Mark Miodownik

Alongside saving the planet, there is one other tantalising side-effect of the repair revolution: its potentially transformative impact on the world of engineering skills. 

One immediate benefit is that it creates jobs. “What’s amazing about the repair economy if you get I get it right is that there’s lots of local high paid jobs,” said Miodownik, “As AI erodes jobs we need good local jobs for people and these are real jobs.”

More broadly, however, many believe a resurgence of repair could play a key role in addressing the manufacturing and engineering sectors’ critical shortage of skills. “I feel like people don’t know how to repair things anymore,” said Miodownik, “they don’t understand what engineering is and they can’t fall in love with engineering.” 

Kyle Wiens agrees that a repair economy could help turn this around: “Repair teaches engineering. We can’t lose a repair economy, because that is the gateway to engineering tinkering, the sort of fundamentals that will enable us to end up with the next generation of things. When you put proprietary screws on the bottom of it and you glue everything together, how is a kid going to take that apart?”