In September, we’re bringing together fixers, community organisers, activists, researchers, policy makers, educators and repair businesses from around the world for Fixfest 2025.

This global gathering for community repair will take place in London from the 5th to the 6th of September. It promised to be a truly unique chance to meet people from across the globe who are making repair happen in their own communities and pushing for the Right to Repair. Over the course of two days, we’ll hear from fascinating speakers, participate in workshops, network and share stories and inspiration.

Fixfest 2025 is only possible thanks to the generous support of our sponsors, iFixit, Back Market and Softwire. We’re grateful to these companies that believe in the importance of repair and reuse to bring the circular economy to life. Our thanks also go to Hackney Council for providing venues and to our funders The City Bridge Foundation and The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

Tickets are now available! 

We have released tickets for Fixfest 2025! Places are limited, so grab yours soon.

Please note that we’re prioritising tickets for people actively involved in community repair, helping shape or campaign for repair-related policy or working in a repair-related business. If you work for a larger company or a university, please contact us before buying a ticket; we have special tickets available for you.

Get your ticket for Fixfest 2025

We are releasing tickets in batches. So if any tickets are sold out, you can join a waiting list to learn when more become available.

And for more information, visit the official Fixfest site here.

We hope you’re as excited as we are! And we can’t wait to see you in September.

Image: Mark A Phillips

In early July we sent an open letter to Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for the Environment. With momentum growing towards a circular economy in the UK, we wanted to make sure the government knows that businesses, from manufacturers to retailers, online marketplaces, to waste companies, support repair and reuse.

This letter is a reflection of the Repair and Reuse Declaration, which is supported by more than 400 businesses, charities and community groups, and 65+ MPs.

See the full letter here.

4th July 2025

Dear Steve Reed, 

We are a broad alliance of businesses, charities and community groups. We are united behind a vision of the UK in which longer lasting electrical products are encouraged through better design, repair and reuse.

This would be good for the British public, who can save money by keeping items in use for longer. It would drive economic growth, boost our circular economy, and create green jobs across the UK by supporting our repair, refurbishment and resale economy. 

Measures to support and incentivise repair and reuse of our products exist in other markets, and have been proven to work. 

Expanding Ecodesign regulations to more product categories, along with product design improvements, will help bring more repairable products onto the market. Consumers are supported to make informed choices through initiatives such as the EU Repairability Index introduced this year.

We encourage removing barriers to repair by harmonising UK regulation in line with EU Right to Repair laws. We recommend reducing costs for households and businesses through Government led incentives such as repair incentives and zero rating VAT on repairs. 

A new generation of repairers could be trained up to revitalise the repair workforce and help the UK move to net zero. Repair growth alone could generate 31,000 new jobs by 2035, with 80,000+ needed by 2040. Up to 13 million reusable items could be kept in use each year by introducing targets to promote reuse of devices rather than recycling. 

These measures need to be driven by an ambitious government that is committed to developing a truly circular economy, in which waste reduction is prioritised. With the right ambition, the UK can move from lagging behind other countries, to becoming a leader in the circular economy. 

We call on the government to use the circular economy strategy process to develop an ambitious roadmap to deliver concrete plans for longer lived electricals. The undersigned are willing and ready to support these efforts.

Signed, 

Businesses

• Currys
• AMDEA (Association of Manufacturers of Domestic Appliances)
• Back Market
• Suez Recycling and Recovery UK
• CLEAR group (Circular Leadership for Electronics and Recycling)
• Beko 
• Hotpoint 
• Indesit
• Leisure
• Blomberg
• Chartered Institute of Wastes Management
• Mobicode 
• The Repair Finder
• Unbroken Solutions 
• Library of Things
• Evonet

NGOs

• Green Alliance 
• Wildlife and Countryside Link
• The Restart Project 

Regional/National Repair Cafe networks

• Repair Cafe Wales
• Circular Communities Scotland 
• Repair Cafe Northern Ireland 
• Repair Cafe Portsmouth
• Cornwall Repair Cafe Network 
• Cambridgeshire Repair Cafe Network

The latest effort in a busy campaign

The letter is just the latest in a series of actions to show the UK government how popular repair and reuse are – and how little there is to lose from introducing ambitious policies to encourage them.

So let’s recap on what’s been going on this year.

The Circular Economy Taskforce was announced right at the end of 2024 and is seen as a once in a generation opportunity to shift our waste system. We wanted to show that there was lots of public support for repair and reuse, and that this enthusiasm was shared in Parliament.

We asked people to invite their MPs to write to DEFRA minister Steve Reed, calling for ambition on repair and reuse. We were delighted that in addition to many MPs sending letters to DEFRA, many of these (and other MPs) raised questions in Parliament about plans to support repair and reuse. Others signed up to the declaration, so in the last 6 months we’ve seen the number of MPs endorsing the declaration double, to almost 70 MPs. See if your MP has signed up, and if not ask them to here. 

All of this ensured that repair and reuse were not forgotten, and we’ve been encouraged to see that ambition in the Circular Economy Taskforce is high, with many of the policies that we’re calling for featuring in proposals shared with Stakeholders.

When the initial 5 focal areas of the Taskforce were announced in March, we were disappointed that electrical waste was not included. With the UK holding the title of second highest producer of e-waste per person, this felt like a big oversight. However after lobbying from across the sector, including the letters that people encouraged their MPs to send to DEFRA, electricals were included as a 6th priority work stream in May.

But no matter how positive it looks, we know that ambition can be lost as policy develops, so we’re not resting on our laurels. In June we teamed up with Back Market in June to host a Parliamentary Repair Cafe, at which DEFRA Minister Mary Creagh spoke, and almost 40 MPs were represented.

Shortly after this, the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Environment released a report calling for a ‘Circular Economy Strategy that matches bold vision with immediate action’. Green Alliance also released a report outlining positive stories of businesses delivering the circular economy.

Highlighting business support for repair and reuse

So why send a letter focused on businesses now? We know this is important because in recent years when we’ve (unsuccessfully) attempted to get right to repair measures into legislation, a clear concern for policy makers has been perceived opposition from business.

We’ve known for a while that businesses broadly support repair and reuse legislation, and we wanted to show that.

The letter is the latest in a string of efforts from across the sector to ensure that repair and reuse are given the priority they – and our planet – deserve. But it won’t be the last. Watch this space for more ways to help make sure that keeping things in use for longer is the norm.

On the 14th of October—ironically on International E-Waste Day—Microsoft will end free support for Windows 10, a decision that will lead to an enormous increase in electronic waste.

Around half of all Windows computers still use Windows 10. And hundreds of millions of these computers don’t meet Windows 11’s strict hardware requirements and will therefore lose any option for continued free support overnight.¹ Without security updates, these computers will no longer meet software compatibility or cybersecurity standards, pressuring individuals, educational institutions, public bodies and businesses to upgrade hardware prematurely.

Microsoft’s decision not only accelerates premature disposal but also undermines efforts to extend product lifespans and puts additional pressure on resource use and waste management systems. US PIRG estimates that dropping support for Windows 10 could potentially lead to over 700 million kg of e-waste.

This is just one example of how software obsolescence drives up resource-use, turns functional devices into e-waste and pushes people into purchasing—often expensive—new devices. Without regulations preventing companies from making this kind of decision, these impacts are only likely to increase.

But we can push back.

Communities are mobilising

Globally, thousands of repair events and community efforts are taking action, breathing new life into computers, saving people money and cutting waste. They’re doing this by helping to install free and open source operating systems both on computers still in use, and in those prematurely discarded by people and companies who already upgraded hardware due to Microsoft’s decision.

We have co-created an ‘End of Windows 10’ toolkit for community repair groups who want to support people affected by this issue. It offers practical advice on how to adapt repair events, run new kinds of events and work with others, as well as information about the options available for people with Windows 10 machines.

And for the ninth consecutive year, communities around the world will gather on the third Saturday of October to celebrate International Repair Day. This year’s edition will bring the issue of software obsolescence to the fore and is expected to be even bigger than 2024 when over 2,000 events were held in 40 countries.

This growing movement shows that people are increasingly refusing to accept fast tech.

And it’s beginning to work. Under pressure, Microsoft is now offering the option to buy up to 3 extra years of affordable security updates for Windows 10 for education users. Meanwhile businesses are required to pay an extortionate price for the same support, and consumers have been promised an expensive extension for only a year, an option that still seems to be unavailable at the time of writing.

But let’s be clear: this last-minute “snooze button” is a band-aid on a bleeding system. Without strong rules, our rights and our planet will continue to be sacrificed for corporate profit. We need regulations that protect people and the planet — not just tech companies’ bottom lines.

A bigger problem than Microsoft

Microsoft is not the only company prematurely pushing its products towards end of life. In the absence of regulation, software obsolescence will continue to end the useful lives of electronic devices prematurely. Computers, wearable tech, smart home devices and more will continue to grow our e-waste mountain as consumers are forced into costly, unwanted purchasing decisions.

In the lead up to International Repair Day, we are calling on our political leaders to help us all put an end to the premature disposal of electronics:

• Make products last: we need strong rules that require minimum durability and repairability, with software and security support to match the potential lifespan – not just for computers, but for all energy-related products. No more devices designed to break or become obsolete before their time.
• Fix the economics: Right now, it’s cheaper to pollute than to preserve. That’s backwards. We must tax short-lived, disposable products more – and reward products that last. Those creating waste should pay for it, not consumers or the planet.
• Give waste a second life: We need clear targets and serious funding to scale up the reuse and repair of WEEE. Recycling alone won’t save us — we need a system that keeps products in use and resources in the loop.

Get involved

You can join in the effort in the following ways:

• Support people in your community affected by the end of Windows 10 with our toolkit
• Plan an event for International Repair Day and add it to the official map
• In the UK? Support the UK Repair & Reuse Declaration by signing it on behalf of your community group or emailing your local MP
• In Europe? Follow Right to Repair Europe for policy updates and more opportunities to get involved

¹ Estimates vary but generally put the figure between 240 million and 400 million computers.

Yesterday we once again teamed up with Back Market to bring repair into the Houses of Parliament, and we were delighted that 33 MPs dropped in to see us, with another 5 represented by staff. Building on the success of our Parliamentary Repair Café last year, we wanted to remind MPs about the importance of repair, both in communities across the UK and in business to save waste, reduce emissions and save money. Whilst highlighting the additional value that repair cafés offer through building connection and sharing valuable skills.

Like last year, we collaborated with our partners in the Community Repair Network to make sure that communities across the UK were represented, and had support from SUEZ and Green Alliance too.

This time around, we were delighted to be joined by Circular Economies minister Mary Creagh, who set up the Circular Economy Taskforce that we’ve been following so closely. She showed her usual level of personal commitment, arriving in repaired clothes, and asking for advice on fixing her phone before talking about the importance of things being made to last and promising a roadmap for circular electricals by Spring next year. 

We were also joined by Jeremy Vine, who told the all too familiar story of an item that wasn’t repairable, in this case a less than 3 year old Segway which is likely to be thrown away. Whilst he was telling this story, one of the repair cafe representatives whispered what we’re sure at least 20 others in the room were thinking, ”that can’t be true, we’ve got a fixer who can repair anything!” In the end one of the visitors from a refurbishment and recycling company offered to give repairing it one last go. 

And so our amazing volunteer fixers got to work helping MPs and their staffers fix their broken gadgets. 

Most of the MPs we spoke to came because constituents had asked them to drop by. Thank you to the hundreds of you who emailed your local MP; over half of all MPs received at least one invitation from a local constituent!

Fixing repair policy

While it was wonderful to share the joy of repair with our elected representatives, we were also able to show MPs how they can address the structural barriers holding back repair and reuse.

Our Repair & Reuse Declaration offers concrete policy solutions that could make it much easier and cheaper to fix everyday products. It calls on the UK government to make repair more affordable, expand the UK’s Right to Repair, introduce a repair index, bring in targets for reuse and repair and support a new generation of repairers.

Over 400 community groups, businesses and allied organisations have already signed it, along with 57 MPs. We were delighted that at least an additional 7 MPs added their names during the event, bringing the total to 64. 

Has your MP signed the declaration? Check here

This extra support from our elected officials comes just after the government’s Circular Economy Taskforce finally added e-waste to their list of priorities following pressure from our campaign and feedback from industry. The Taskforce has been billed as a once in a generation opportunity to shift how we consume, use and, eventually, dispose of our products. We have a real chance to significantly reduce waste, lower emissions and boost the local repair economy. 

And so we hope that this momentum will encourage the Taskforce to keep ambitions high, developing concrete recommendations aimed at prioritising repair and reuse, so that we can  keep our electricals in use for longer.

If you’d like to stay up to date with the latest Right to Repair news from the UK, subscribe to our newsletter and Right to Repair updates below: 

[Photos by Mark A Phillips]

Which MPs came to the Parliamentary Repair Café?

Harriett Baldwin | Conservatives | West Worcestershire

Danny Beales | Labour | Uxbridge and South Ruislip

Karen Bradley | Conservatives | Staffordshire Moorlands

Irene Campbell | Labour | North Ayrshire and Arran

Charlotte Cane | Liberal Democrats | Ely and East Cambridgeshire

Mary Creagh | Labour | Coventry East

Rachel Blake | Labour (Co-op) | Cities of London and Westminster

Ann Davies | Plaid | Caerfyrddin

Caroline Dinenage | Conservatives | Gosport

Neil Duncan-Jordan | Labour | Poole

Luke Evans | Conservatives | Hinckley and Bosworth

Catherine Fookes | Labour | Monmouthshire

Allison Gardner | Labour | Stoke-on-Trent South

Becky Gittins | Labour | Clwyd East

Tom Gordon | Liberal Democrats | Harrogate and Knaresborough

Tom Hayes | Labour | Bournemouth East

Ruth Jones | Labour | Newport West and Islwyn

Warinder Juss | Labour | Wolverhampton West

Amanda Martin | Labour | Portsmouth North

Lola McEvoy | Labour | Darlington

Navendu Mishra | Labour | Stockport

Stephen Morgan | Labour | Portsmouth South

Kieran Mullan | Conservatives | Bexhill and Battle

Caroline Nokes | Conservatives | Romsey and Southampton North

Richard Quigley | Labour | Isle of Wight West

Andrew Ranger | Labour | Wrexham

Andrew Rosindell | Conservatives | Romford

Anna Sabine | Liberal Democrats | Frome and East Somerset

Jessica Toale | Labour | Bournemouth West

Liz Twist | Labour | Blaydon and Consett

Harpreet Uppal | Labour | Huddersfield

Caroline Voaden | Liberal Democrats | South Devon

David Williams | Labour | Stoke-on-Trent North

And another 5 MPs were represented by their constituency office staff:

Julia Buckley | Labour | Shrewsbury

Richard Foord | Liberal Democrats | Honiton and Sidmouth

Ellie Reeves | Labour | Lewisham West and East Dulwich

Ian Sollom | Liberal Democrats | St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire

Sir Keir Starmer | Labour | Holborn and St Pancras

We are absolutely thrilled to announce the return of Fixfest, which will take place in London (UK) from 5-6 September, 2025.

Fixfest is a global gathering of repairers and tinkerers, activists, policy-makers, thinkers, educators and companies from all over the world. We come together every few years.

Organised by The Restart Project, Fixfest 2025 promises to be a unique chance to meet and learn from people involved in every aspect of community repair and those pushing for making repair available to all across the globe. We’re excited to share the first two confirmed sponsors of Fixfest 2025: iFixit and Softwire. We’ll announce additional sponsors as they are finalised.

What topics will Fixfest 2025 cover?

We’ve come a long way since the very first Fixfest back in 2017. At the time, community repair groups were few and generally understood as a nice hobby. Most attendees heard the term Right to Repair there for the first time. Today there are thousands of repair cafés around the world, the repair movement has strong demands for policymakers at both national and global levels, and plenty of companies are trying to build a new repair and reuse economy.

Yet, there’s plenty still to address: from the slow progress in pro-repair legislation to the ever-rising tide of throwaway products coming to market, from software obsolescence to marketing campaigns asking us to recycle and upgrade rather than to repair and slow down production and consumption of new products.

As we bring the community together once again, we’ll focus on three key themes:

1. Building repair solutions on the ground: how do we make a range of community-based repair options available for local people? How do we grow our collective impact as repair groups and strengthen our networks? What’s working and what are the challenges?
2. Making the business case for repair: what role can independent repair businesses play and how can we support their development? How do we build an economy that works for people and the planet, creating repair jobs and reducing unnecessary waste?
3. Fixing the system: what progress is being made towards the Right to Repair at a policy level, what are the challenges and how can we overcome them? How do we tackle overproduction? How do we make repair affordable? How do we prioritise reuse over recycling?

How to get involved

Fixfest will include panels, presentations, hands-on sessions and talks. It’s designed around topics and expertise shared by all participants, so if you’d like to be involved we recommend submitting a session proposal or suggestion for a topic you’d like to be covered in the programme.

Ultimately Fixfest is about bringing together an incredibly inspiring group of people making a difference in their own communities in every corner of the world. So we’ll have plenty of opportunities for participants to mingle and get to know each other, spark spontaneous conversations and come up with new collaborations to take the repair movement to the next level.

Propose a session for Fixfest 2025

We will publish more details about Fixfest 2025 soon!

Be the first to hear the latest Fixfest news by signing up for email updates below:

At the end of March, the UK government’s environment department (DEFRA) announced the five priority work streams of its Circular Economy Taskforce. We welcomed the ambition, with a clear commitment to repair and reuse, but were dismayed by the absence of electrical waste (e-waste). With the UK holding the title of second highest producer of e-waste per person, this felt like a big oversight.

It seems many other people felt this too. Many of you e-mailed your MP, calling for e-waste to be considered and asking them to remind DEFRA that many people—including dozens of MPs—want to see ambitious support for repair and reuse. As a result of this support and feedback from industry, it was decided that a roadmap should be developed for electrical waste after all. It’s now effectively the sixth priority for the Taskforce.

This is great news, and things are moving quickly!

This month we were invited to both a large workshop and a ministerial round-table to hear the proposals that had been developed on electricals and offer our input.

What we heard is encouraging. Yes there are the usual measures to increase recycling of electricals (what should be a last resort). But for the first time they were matched by well thought out policies to increase reuse and repair. What’s more, representatives from across industry seemed to be in agreement that these measures were needed. Keeping electrical products in use for longer really does seem to be a priority as this roadmap is developed.

The Circular Economy Taskforce has been billed as a once in a generation opportunity to shift how we consume, use and, eventually, dispose of our products. The indications so far are that this opportunity is not being wasted (pardon the pun).

But this experience has shown that continued reminders of public and parliamentary support for repair and reuse measures are incredibly important. So we’re delighted to be hosting a repair cafe in parliament in June. For this to be as impactful as we need it to be, we need as many MPs to be there as possible. And we know MPs care about what their constituents think.

Please help us get a great turnout by emailing your MP now to ask them to attend using our simple tool below…

[Update: This action has now ended – thanks to all of you who emailed your MP!]

The UK is the second highest producer of electronic waste per capita in the world. And four in five Brits want the government to do more to support repair. Yet the UK is falling behind other European countries and the USA by failing to introduce pro-repair policies.

When we first launched the Repair & Reuse Declaration alongside our community repair allies from across the UK, we wanted to encourage our political leaders to make repair and reuse more accessible for everybody.

MPs are starting to listen

So we’re delighted to announce that more than 50 MPs have now signed the Declaration, endorsing key policies that could save households money, reduce our environmental impact and shift us towards a more sustainable economy. Even more exciting is that many of these supporting MPs have written to DEFRA or asked questions in parliament about repair and reuse, including one that mentioned the Declaration itself.

These are huge milestones and significant steps towards putting repair and reuse on the political agenda. And now is a critical time to build on this momentum.

Right now, the government’s Circular Economy Taskforce is setting priorities for a new strategy that could reshape our waste management system.

While the Taskforce missed its first opportunity to address the e-waste elephant in the room, we were pleased to be able to feed into the strategy at a roundtable with Mary Creagh, the Government Minister overseeing this work. And we’ve recently had confirmation that the Taskforce will now develop a roadmap for e-waste, including measures to support repair and reuse.

This is a really promising development. The flurry of MPs showing their support for the declaration and its principles has surely helped keep this on the agenda.

Now it’s crucial that we keep up this drumbeat to ensure ambition doesn’t get watered down as the strategy is developed.

So we’re bringing repair back to Parliament

Last year, we brought the repair movement to Parliament and were thrilled to welcome 30 MPs to our Repair Café. They met representatives from their local community repair groups and learned more about the pro-reuse and repair policies that we know would benefit people and planet.

This year we want to build on that success by reaching even more MPs, building more support for the Declaration and urging the Circular Economy Taskforce to include ambitious Right to Repair measures in their recommendations to the government.

On the 11th of June, we’ll arrive with our toolkits to show them first hand why repair and reuse matter and how the right policies can make it more accessible for all of us.

Once again, we’ve teamed up with our partners in the Community Repair Network to make sure that communities across the UK are represented, along with refurbished tech seller Back Market to bring in the voice of business too. We’re delighted to have the support of Suez and Green Alliance too.

We’ve invited all MPs to drop by. But if you’re based in the UK, we need your help to make sure your local MP comes along. As a constituent, you have real influence when it comes to your MP’s choices.

Please consider asking your MP to attend, using our simple tool below:

[This action has now ended]

We are so excited to announce the launch of our second Fixing Factory! On April 23rd we officially opened our doors, kicking off with a launch event. Located in the heart of Hackney, we’re bringing accessible and visible fixing to another community.

The Hackney Fixing Factory is a community repair hub helping people repair their broken electricals, and learn new fixing skills, shifting us from our current take-make-waste linear system towards a repair economy fit for the future.

We have exciting plans for the new space, including a wide range of events for local communities:

• Fixperience workshops – a fun, hands-on way to jump into DIY repairs, cut down on waste, and keep a little extra cash in your pocket.
• Weekly community repair events – drop in sessions to get help with a repair
• Future Fixers training programme – free training for aspiring volunteers
• and so much more…

Our affordable Fixperience workshops are running this May across our Hackney and Camden sites. You can learn the ins and outs of basic electrical repairs by disassembling and reassembling a toaster at our Toaster Teardown. Or go beyond the basics with an intro to soldering, learning how to splice wires and tackle simple electronics projects at our Solder On workshop. Book your space here.

There will also be plenty of opportunities to get involved.

Want to sign up to become a volunteer? We’re looking for people who are passionate about fixing, helping others and the planet to join our volunteer team. Learn more here.

The Hackney Fixing Factory is part of our new five year strategy to connect the fixing community for a future in which electronics don’t cost the earth. It joins our existing Camden site, which is run by project partners Possible. Together, we’re looking forward to offering our first ever Future Fixers programme in a few weeks! Learn more and sign up here.

Want a Fixing Factory in your London borough? We’re aiming to bring two more Fixing Factories to London high-streets in London in the next few months. While we’re looking at Haringey for one, if you have a suitable space for our fourth location, drop us a line!

Featured photo: Mark A Phillips

Tariffs. New tariffs, existing tariffs, delays to increased tariffs, zero tariffs… The last few weeks have been a true roller-coaster of breaking financial and economic news. Of course this is an extremely complex issue, affecting jobs and opportunities to export goods as well as the cost of importing others.

But at the heart of most of these debates lie assumptions around infinite economic growth, about selling more and changing barriers to producing and consuming more.

We’re on a different path.

Repair is resilience

We notice that we’re flooded by throwaway products being produced and discarded at a rate our planet can’t sustain. We need real system change to make the repair, reuse and refurbishment of existing products the norm.

Sure, even spare parts and components that extend the life of products might well be affected by tariffs, now or in the future. But the more we extend the life of the things we already own, the less reliant we become on global supply chains, the fewer raw materials we need to extract and the less we have to rely on  expensive and often inefficient technologies to extract reusable materials from discarded products via recycling.

We appreciate we’re not talking about exporting parmigiano cheese or importing bourbon whiskey. But regardless, choosing to repair and to hold on to all that can be repaired stands out as an effective way to mitigate these kinds of geopolitical and economic shocks.

As previous economic and supply chain shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns have reminded us – it’s imperative that we develop alternative, more decentralised economies, not as dependent on the availability of everything, everywhere, all of the time.

Being able to repair can make communities less vulnerable to these impacts and more self-reliant, in multiple ways. For example, repair makes us less dependent on buying new products, avoiding issues with their availability and not being subject to price hikes. In fact, we’re actively working on making repair even more appealing and affordable, with our pilot of 50% off on repair prices with repair vouchers.

Crucially, repair and reuse also help us strengthen our communities by building relationships and support networks: we see this every single time we run or visit a community repair event, where volunteers generously lend their skills to inspire participants in learning how to fix and maintain their products.

Zooming out, our vision of local repair ecosystems – community events, repair shops, Fixing Factories – also reduces dependence on manufacturers themselves, who are often unable or unwilling to provide the repair support we need to resist the usual marketing wave of “upgrade, replace, recycle”.

And of course repair offers an effective way to reduce our environmental impact, contributing to reduced climate disruption.

So, what do we want?

Regardless of the next headlines, we’d love policymakers not to forget to focus on laws and policies that make repair more affordable and accessible for everyone. There are simply still too many barriers for too many products making repair too difficult and/or expensive. This is why we call for a universal Right to Repair.

In the UK, we want to see the demands of our Repair and Reuse Declaration – already signed by around 400 organisations and nearly 50 MPs – taken seriously by policymakers. We want repair to be made more affordable; Right to Repair regulations that cover all consumer products; a repair index to help the public choose more repairable products; requirements and targets for reuse and repair to be prioritised over recycling; and government support to train a new generation of repairers.

We invite everyone to ask their MPs to endorse our work.

Email your MP about repair and reuse today

At European level, our Right to Repair Europe coalition keeps on pushing to widen the range of products covered by repairability requirements and consumer rights on repair. Yet we’re concerned about the slow speed at which all of this is progressing. We hope that policymakers will increase their support for repair and reuse while developing the upcoming Circular Economy Act.

Follow the work of the coalition

We know change is possible – the success in requiring that all new smartphone models introduced in the EU from June this year be more repairable and substantially more durable is a step in the right direction.

But we need much more.

Whatever economic disruption lies ahead, prioritising repair through local action and government policy stands out as a way to invest in our communities’ resilience and climate mitigation.

We could not be more excited to announce that the UK’s first ever Repair Vouchers are now available!

In partnership with North London Waste Authority, ReLondon and FixFirst, we’re offering residents of the North London boroughs (Haringey, Hornsey, Waltham Forest, Islington, Camden, Barnet and Enfield) up to 50% off the cost of repairs at participating local businesses.

Why Repair Vouchers?

The cost of professional repair is one of the biggest barriers to getting things fixed. In fact, more than half of Brits who say they would not repair their device if it became necessary cite cost as one of the reasons (Restart, 2020).

There are lots of reasons for this; products aren’t usually designed to be fixed, spare parts can be hard to find and so on. That’s why we’re calling for a universal Right to Repair.

But repair vouchers can be a great way to make professional repair more affordable while also supporting local repair businesses. That helps us all reduce waste and save money by not having to buy new.

Repair Voucher schemes have already proved successful in other European countries, including Austria, France and Germany. Now it’s the UK’s turn!

Our pilot programme

Last week, we gathered at Neil Electrics, a family-owned shop and repair business in Haringey to launch our small repair voucher trial scheme that will run to September. And we’re thrilled that over three hundred people have already applied for a voucher to fix a huge range of items, from lamps to laptops.

While the trial programme only covers North London, it marks an exciting development that we hope will make the case for similar schemes across the country.

It’s one of the policy asks in our widely supported Repair and Reuse Declaration, and we know from polling in 2023 that 79% of the UK public support a government repair voucher scheme (Restart, 2023).

So over the next six months, we’ll monitor how the scheme is working and see what it can teach us about how to make repair more affordable and accessible to more people.

Take part

If you’d like a Repair Voucher or are interested in joining the scheme as a repair business, simply visit the website to apply.

Featured photo: North London Waste Authority

‘The only constant is change’, or so goes the old cliché. This certainly feels true since we put together our last strategy here at The Restart Project; the world has indeed changed. As have we.

So we’ve been taking stock and looking ahead to the next five years. We’ve been examining our vision for the future and—just as importantly—reimagining how to get there. The end result is our new five-year strategy, which we’re now delighted to share!

Our long-term vision remains steady as does much of our core work. But if you know us well, you’ll notice that our new strategy does shift some areas of focus and introduces new priorities.

A world in flux

Some things haven’t changed since 2021. In the face of the intensifying climate crisis and soaring cost of living, repair and reuse remain crucial opportunities to reduce our environmental impact and save households money.

But many of the trends we identified back then have only accelerated. Geopolitical instability is fast becoming one of the defining features of this decade. While on a local level, the number of community repair groups has never been higher both in the UK and globally.

We’re also seeing increasing interest in repair and reuse from businesses. From waste management companies to second-hand tech retailers, support from new coalitions of commercial organisations appears to be emerging.

More encouraging still are tangible policy successes made by Right to Repair Europe, the campaign we co-founded back in 2019. Over the next two years, we will start to see new EU repair rules come into force for products like smartphones and tablets, as well as for user-replaceable batteries in most consumer products.

In the UK, the new government’s Circular Economy Taskforce is a promising start, even if they did miss their first opportunity to support the repair and reuse of e-waste.

Yet in both the UK and EU, we’re still pushing back against a lack of ambition and—particularly in the UK—a narrow focus on recycling, despite its limitations and overwhelming public support for reuse and repair.

How we’re responding

Our new strategy aims to take these trends into account as we work towards our long term vision. We also want to lean into our key strengths: increasing access to repair for people on the ground while also pushing for system change; and bringing together communities, networks and coalitions.

Our new mission statement reflects this:

And our new strategy is built on three pillars…

Building local repair solutions

We will continue to work with the community repair movement, local authorities and other partners to demonstrate that locally focused solutions can work. These include high street repair, training schemes and, of course, community repair events.

Look out for more work on our Fixing Factories, London repair network and support for repair groups around the world.

Making the business case

Our work with commercial partners and others will help make the business case for reuse and repair. Initially, this will include our roll out of the UK’s first repair voucher programme. But we aim to expand this into new areas to trial the policies that we’re calling for. This could include a voluntary repair standard to increase access to repair information and spare parts, and a voluntary repair index for new products.

Changing policy

We will continue to bring the repair movement together for a stronger voice. This means we’ll keep campaigning and producing research alongside partners to secure policy change that prioritises repair and reuse over recycling, offers tax incentives for repair and reuse, and secures a universal Right to Repair for all electrical products.

Look out for opportunities to get involved both in the UK and across the rest of Europe.

Of course, we can’t do any of this without your support! We have always been people-powered and that is certainly not changing. So we hope you are as excited about the next five years as we are and that you’ll join us on this journey towards a more repairable future where products work for people, for planet and for longer.

For more detail, see our new strategy page here.

And if you’d like to help us deliver our new strategy, we’re currently recruiting for new trustees!

On 27th March Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) set out the department’s plans to transition to a circular economy. 

The ambition is high, and DEFRA’s decision to set up a Circular Economy Taskforce is a huge opportunity. This is a once in a generation chance to shift away from our throwaway economy. 

But, with the first announcement about the detail of the Taskforce’s work, we can’t help but be dismayed about the lack of focus on electrical waste (e-waste).  

The initial five priorities of the Circular Economy Taskforce will be textiles, transport, construction, agri-food, and chemicals and plastics. These were apparently chosen because they had the most potential to generate major economic gains while protecting the environment and delivering net zero.

We understand that this won’t be the full extent of the Circular Economy Strategy, just the initial focus for the Taskforce. But e-waste needs to be on the next list of priorities, and you can help to make sure that happens by continuing to show that there’s popular, and MP, support for action on e-waste. 

Here’s why e-waste needs tackling: 

• E-waste is the world’s fastest growing waste stream 
• The UK is the second highest producer of e-waste per capita in the world
• The environmental impacts of manufacturing new electrical products are enormous; making a single smartphone produces over 50 kg of CO2e, uses 14,000 litres of water and depletes 6.5kg of metal ores. We must keep these products in use for longer – and to do that we have to address the factors that are leading to electrical products being disposed of so frequently.
• Almost half of the electrical products that are shredded for recycling in the UK could be reused. Across the UK this could mean that over 30,000 usable electrical products are being recycled every week. 

So let’s applaud this opportunity for a truly circular economy. But let’s ramp up the pressure to consider e-waste in the next round of priorities, and continue to show how much support there is for ambition – and policies to match them on repair and reuse.

[Featured image by Mark A Phillips licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]

If you know anything about Restart, you’ll know that we LOVE repair vouchers. It’s easy to see why they’re a great idea: the cost of professional repair is one of the biggest barriers to getting things fixed, so repair vouchers, which give consumers a discount at repair shops are a great way to cut the cost for citizens and encourage repair. 

So we’re thrilled to announce the launch of our new trial repair voucher programme! If you live in North London, you can apply for a repair voucher now to get up to 50% off the cost of a repair from April!

Why vouchers?

There are voucher schemes in a number of other countries, most notably across Austria since 2022 after a number of successful regional trials. And these have been shown to encourage more repairs. 

Data from an Upper Austrian regional repair voucher trial found that 40% beneficiaries wouldn’t have chosen repair without the scheme. The data also showed that vouchers can get people into the habit of repair: 80% of repair businesses noticed increases in the number of repairs during the trial. There was a small drop after the trial ended, but repair rates didn’t drop back to pre-trial levels, suggesting that once people try out their local repair shop, they’re more likely to get things repaired again, whether there’s a voucher or not.

If you’d like to geek out about repair vouchers in other countries, check out this amazing summary of the schemes already in place from our European coalition, Right to Repair Europe.

Our plans for the UK

Until now, there’s been no trial of electrical repair vouchers in the UK. It’s one of the policy asks in our widely supported Repair and Reuse Declaration , and we know from polling in 2023 that 79% of the UK public support a government repair voucher scheme (Restart, 2023). But we also know that often, national policy needs to be based on regional trials. So we’re delighted to be part of trialing a scheme in 3 North London boroughs.

The scheme officially launches in April 2025 and will run for 6 months, funded by the North London Waste Authority’s Community Fund. We’re working with ReLondon and London Councils, both of which are part of a longer-term effort to develop a London-wide repair voucher scheme.

By participating, you not only get up to 50% off the cost of repairing a household electrical item, but you can help us make the case for repair vouchers across London, and ultimately, the whole of the UK!

Apply for a repair voucher

Note: this post was originally published on 09/01/2025. It was updated as the scheme went live on 03/03/2025 with information about how to apply for a voucher.

We’re happy to announce that Restart has been accepted as a member of the new EU’s Ecodesign Forum.

For us, this is quite a big deal. The Forum is a new group created as part of the recently approved EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). It’s meant to be a space for experts to provide insights and contributions to help shape specific legislation that improves the design of future products to be sold in the EU. It builds on a former “Ecodesign Consultation Forum”, which will remain active until it clears the backlog of legislation in development, including repairability criteria for printers, vacuum cleaners and computers.

Bringing new perspectives

Those of you following our work on Right to Repair have probably heard us complain in the past about the slow process in the development of ecodesign legislation, as well as the lack of representation for repair organisations, repair communities and other members of civil society within the Consultation Forum. In the last few years we’ve been able to attend and bring our perspective to a few of these meetings, nominated by the European Environmental Bureau – the largest environmental think tank, of which we’re a proud member. But since we began following these topics, there has been simply no opportunity for us or any other organisation to have our voices and perspectives join this important policy forum.

That’s why we celebrate not just our inclusion in the Ecodesign Forum as one of 100 member organisations, but also that a range of our key partners and allies have joined too, including HOP, RREUSE, ECOS, EBB, as well as other great NGOs such as Client Earth. It is worth acknowledging that the vast majority of the Forum’s members are still industry-oriented, but we’ll make sure to contribute much needed voices, perspectives and the urgency for achieving real change as rapidly as possible.

Raising the bar

Restart applied to be a member for three key reasons. As a founding member of Right to Repair Europe, we want to be able to share insights and position papers we develop as part of this growing coalitions of partners, making sure that our demands for truly ambitious repairaibility goals get heard.

From day one we’ve championioned the power of communities to shape the future of repair. For more than a decade, all our work collecting and sharing data on key barriers to repair experienced by real people at community repair events has been aimed at raising these issues as broadly as possible. So we’re thrilled to be able to bring insights we developed with partners—such as our most recent report The Rise of Community Repair—to the attention of EU policymakers. And we’ll remind them frequently that there’s still no Right to Repair in sight for 96% of products we see at repair events.

But there’s one more reason. As a UK-based organisation, we know that when it comes to ecodesign legislation, the EU is the main entity influencing the future design of products via regulation. This work is happening too slowly even in the EU, but it’s barely happening at all elsewhere. So we’re grateful for the opportunity to contribute to shaping its future. The mandate of the Ecodesign Forum starts with important conversations on expanding the range of products covered by future legislation, for example by coming up with “horizontal” requirements for repairability – essentially regulations applying across multiple product categories, not just ‘smartphones’ or ‘washing machines’. We will try our best to contribute effectively to these conversations, and to bring the most helpful examples from our wide community of partners and from community repair volunteers around the world to help make the case for truly repairable, longer lasting products.

From the street to the conference room

One final anecdote. As you can see in the picture above, back on 10th December 2018 we were outside the building where the Ecodesign Forum hosts its meetings. We will never forget that day — when we ran the first Right to Repair protest in Europe — the beginning of the movement we belong to with pride. From today, we’re formally granted access to the meeting room where decisions are made, and we commit to keep on pushing for real change to happen, hopefully quickly enough! If you’d like updates on the work on ecodesign, we recommend following Right to Repair Europe’s website (especially the Resources section).

For years we’ve been demonstrating how repair and reuse can bring communities together, save people money, teach new skills, reduce waste and so much more. But too often, our throwaway economy makes repair harder and more expensive than it needs to be, locking us out of options to keep using products for longer.

To change this for good, we need a universal Right to Repair enshrined in law. So what progress is being made in the UK, and how can you support it?

Why do we need a Right to Repair?

The problem is simple. The products we use everyday are getting harder and harder to fix. As a result, electronic waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world and the UK is the second highest producer per capita on Earth, generating 24 kg per person per year! At the same time, many of our household gadgets have huge carbon footprints and contain precious materials that we never get back, even through recycling. This throwaway economy drives climate breakdown, pollutes the planet and leaves us all feeling frustrated.

The Right to Repair is a global movement to make sure everyone has the right to fix the products they own and keep using them for longer. It aims to change regulations on how these things are made in the first place to make them easy and affordable to repair, extend their useful lives, expand our rights after purchase and prioritise reuse over recycling.

What’s happening in the UK?

People in the UK overwhelmingly want more repairable products and think the government should ensure this. In late 2023, we wrote the UK Repair & Reuse Declaration with partners from across the UK repair community. The Declaration calls on the government to adopt five key policies that could move us towards a truly circular, less wasteful, and resilient economy.

As of February 2025, nearly 400 community groups, businesses and allied organisations have since signed the Declaration, as well as 35 sitting MPs.

More recently, the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has set up a Circular Economy Taskforce to help shape a new circular economy strategy for England. Previous government strategies have focused almost entirely on recycling, which does nothing to reduce waste and involves shredding tens of thousands of reusable products every day.

This new Taskforce is a one-in-a-generation opportunity to shift the system towards repair, reuse and other forms of waste reduction.

What can you do?

1. Ask your MP to write to DEFRA

Help show that there is mass support for a shift away from our throwaway economy. Ask your MP to write to DEFRA Minister Steve Reed, reflecting your support for repair and reuse, and asking the minister how DEFRA’s Circular Economy Taskforce will support these popular issues. And, if they haven’t already, you can also ask your MP to sign the Repair and Reuse Declaration themselves.

Watch our recent webinar for advice on how to engage your MP and local councillors.

2. Sign the UK Repair & Reuse Declaration

If you represent a community repair group, repair business or allied organisation, you’re invited to sign the UK Reuse & Repair Declaration. Signing demonstrates your support for policies that can make repair and reuse more accessible for everyone and adds extra weight to the Declaration.

3. Plan an event or action for International Repair Day 2025

International Repair Day is back! This year it falls on the 18th of October, but it’s never too early to start planning. How will you celebrate the day? Can you invite your MP or get local media coverage? We’re working on some exciting plans too, which will share soon.

In the meantime, stay in the loop by signing up for our newsletter below.

We’re always getting asked about opportunities for upskilling and where to start if you want to be a DIY repairer or volunteer. And we’re so happy to announce the new Fixperience Workshops coming to the Queen’s Crescent Fixing Factory this year!

The Fixperience Workshops will teach you hands-on skills to repair everyday items and are affordable, beginner-friendly, and maybe most importantly fun! The first round of workshops include:

Solder On: An Introduction To Soldering For Repair

Go beyond the basics with an intro to soldering, learning how to splice wires and tackle simple electronics projects. Perfect for anyone looking to level up their DIY skills.

Up Close With Your Remote

Dive into fixing everyday electronics as you dismantle, clean, and reassemble a remote control. Great for tackling small, everyday issues yourself.

How To Change A Plug Like A Pro

Plug changes don’t need to be intimidating! This workshop covers the basics, so you’ll be prepared for quick, safe plug repairs.

Toaster Teardown

Learn the ins and outs of basic electrical repairs by disassembling and reassembling a toaster. A must for anyone wanting to master appliance maintenance and basic electrical safety.

There are limited spots so make sure to book now to secure your place.

Learn more and book your spot

[Featured image by Mark A Phillips, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]

This post from our co-founder Ugo Vallauri was originally published on Euroconsumers.

What is the goal of a true circular economy?

Depending on the actors involved, motivations can seem at times in contradiction with each other or lead to completely different objectives. Some argue that circularity is about ensuring that we recoup as many of the materials in the products we no longer use so that they can be used to manufacture new devices and appliances. Others concentrate on the importance of pushing ahead with legislation making future products more repairable as well as energy-efficient.

Fixing our relationship with electronics by resisting obsolescence

These are all important aspects, but what about all of the products that have already been manufactured and are still in use? For this, fixing our relationship with electronics is key, and this has been The Restart Project’s tagline since our inception.

From day one, at our very first Restart Party back in 2012, we’ve supported community approaches towards extending the life of existing products: resisting obsolescence by sharing knowledge, skills and creating alternative solutions where they didn’t seem to exist. Our primary focus is consumer products, small electricals and electronics.

Why this focus? Electrical waste (e-waste) is one of the fastest growing waste streams globally.

It was estimated that 62 million tonnes were produced globally in 2022, an increase of 80% since 2010. 

One third of this waste (20.4 million tonnes) is small devices, the products we see at community repair events. 

Only 12% of these are recycled globally.

While recycling rates are higher in Europe, repair can help to cut this waste by keeping items working longer.

What’s the role of recycling?

Recycling is important – but only when repair and reuse are no longer possible.

In 2023, we tested 600 products taken to a recycling centre in London, and we learned that shockingly almost half of those sent to be shredded for recycling could have been reused instead. 

Earlier this year  together with members of our community, we researched all recycling centres in the UK , and discovered that less than 1 in 5 ( 19%) of them offer reuse options for the electrical and electronic products that residents bring in.

While products should be correctly recycled at the end of their lifetime, many should be living a longer – or a second, third life –  in the hands of people that can use them, before they reach the bin.

By focusing so heavily on recycling, we are missing opportunities to reduce waste, lower climate emissions associated with manufacturing new products, while saving households money.

For many of the products we use, the vast majority of the environmental impact occurs during the manufacturing phase: for a smartphone for example, up to 80% of the overall impact is before you’ve ever switched it on. And current recycling technologies can only recoup a small amount of some of the materials.

A circular vs a linear electronics economy

So, what could a circular economy for these products look like, compared to what we have now?

• Manufacturers should proudly be offering affordable repair options, learning from best practice by independent repairers. Giving consumers the choice of genuine, compatible or even used spare parts. Instead, when you try to get a product repaired, you’re often told you should upgrade to a more modern product instead – it’s happened to me multiple times this year alone.
• Mobile operators, and other retailers, should reward slower approaches to consumption, for example by giving tangible discounts and benefits to people not upgrading their device. Instead, there still seems to be a gold rush to win over new customers by offering the opportunity to change device every 3 (!) months. ⁽¹⁾
• Marketplaces should be clear and transparent not just about their return policies, but also their return practices, for example by committing to resell or donate any unsold or returned product. Instead, we keep hearing and seeing reports of products destroyed or sent to recycling once they’re returned ⁽²⁾, because it’s less expensive than having them checked and prepared for reuse.
• Recycling centres should become reuse centres first: filtering products to be reused as much as possible, while creating opportunities to salvage reusable spare parts for products no longer repairable.  Instead of losing tonnes of functioning products and parts that could be reused.
• Consumers should pledge to repair their products, keep them in use for longer before upgrading, choose refurbished second hand products rather than brand new ones, whenever available.  Businesses as well as public authorities should be required to do the same, and should be transparent about their policies.

Measure for circularity

We also need new targets and indicators to help us measure the shift to a more circular economy. A good example is Goal 12 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals: Responsible Consumption and Production. Among its targets is 12.5 “Substantially reduce waste generation” by 2030 through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse.

The only indicator currently included to check on progress is the increase in recycling. Sure: we need to recycle more – and better – rather than sending products to landfill. But we should also recycle later, at the very end of a product’s useful lifetime.

And we should measure how much we repair, reuse, and prevent unnecessary manufacture and purchasing of new products, if we’re serious about reducing our environmental footprint.

So, while we keep pushing for ambitious right to repair legislation via the Right to Repair Europe coalition, we should make sure that the future Circular Economy Act focuses on reusing, repairing and not just improving recycling rates of e-waste.

—

References:

⁽¹⁾ As still advertised for example by O2 in the UK at the end of 2024: https://www.o2.co.uk/o2-switch-up

⁽²⁾ This report by the European Environmental Bureau lists a wide range of proofs of the amount of unsold electronics destroyed across Europe: https://eeb.org/library/note-on-the-destruction-of-unsold-electronics/

Featured photo: Mark A Phillips

2024 has been a huge year for us, campaigning loudly for repair and reuse in the UK. In Autumn of last year, we launched the UK Repair and Reuse Declaration which was met by love and support from fixers, organisers, businesses and NGOs all over the UK. We quickly went to work supporting individuals and repair groups alike to contact their local MPs and ask them to sign the declaration. Some MPs did but the majority were slow to. If you want a reminder of what the declaration is all about, you can check out our explainer on what we’re asking for.

We brought repair to parliament

In the spring we hosted a repair cafe in parliament. We enlisted the help of our friends at Back Market, SUEZ, Replace Base, Green Alliance, The Design Council and community groups across the UK and made it a Restart Party to remember. More than 30 MPs came to find out what a repair cafe is all about and some of them even brought items to be fixed there and then, leading to more than 11 MPs and peers signing the declaration on the day! 

In the summer we paused our efforts to recruit MP supporters whilst the General Election campaign was underway. But once new electees were settled in, it was time to renew our efforts tenfold. So, we sent a joint letter on behalf of the declaration signatories to Sir Keir Starmer immediately after the election. And we’ve just had a response from Parliamentary Under-Secretary for DEFRA, Mary Creagh CBE MP!

We worked with Repair Cafes around the country to congratulate their newly elected MPs and invite them to visit them for Repair Day this year, see what community repair is all about (absolutely love it!) then sign their support for declaration. And we are so delighted with what we have achieved together. 

Then we brought it to a town near you

Repair Day led to a flurry of activity with MPs visiting their local repair events all across the UK including in Bath, Chiswick, Bounds Green, Cambridgeshire and Llandrindod. We’re so proud to end the year with 41 MPs signed up, 2 peers and 3 councils! And while political support is very important, we don’t want to forget the 55 businesses, 32 national organisations and of course, 245 community groups who are signed up to support repair and reuse in the UK. 

So what’s next?

We’re keen to push the issue of repair and reuse even further to the forefront of the government’s mind in the new year, particularly while an expert circular economy task force meets to develop a strategy for the UK. So watch this space for our January actions and subscribe for updates so you don’t miss out on getting involved. 

And as always if you’d like to encourage your MP to support the declaration, we’ve made it super easy. Find our emailing tool here.

[Feature image by Mark A Phillips, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]

This has been another amazing year for Restart and repair in general. We’ve been hard at work—along with our wonderful community—and are incredibly proud of everything we’ve achieved together.

It was hard to pick just ten, but here are our top moments from this year…

10. We sparked a Student Repair Revolution

We teamed up with our friends in the Community Repair Network to bring repair into universities across the UK. Together with staff and students at over a dozen universities, we worked to create more awareness about e-waste, and help young people get hands on with repair, often for the first time.

The resources we produced are now available for anyone who wants to bring repair to their own campus!

9. We got repair in the news

Over the course of this year, we’ve managed to get repair in the news over 50 times on TV, on radio and online!

We’ve worked with media outlets ranging from the BBC to The Guardian, Forbes, The Verge and The Telegraph as well as publications from Italy to India to talk about why repair matters, how people can get involved and why we need a universal Right to Repair enshrined in law.

8. We discovered that only 1 in 5 UK waste facilities offer reuse for electricals

We recycle thousands of working and repairable devices every week in the UK. But fixing or reusing them instead could reduce waste, lower emissions and save households money.

So we investigated what reuse options are currently available at recycling centres and other waste facilities and the challenges of making reuse more widely available.

With the help of our community, we mapped reuse at these waste facilities across the UK and released our data for anyone to see.

We found that most people think electricals that are brought to waste facilities in good condition should be kept in use through repair or reuse. But only a fifth of the UK’s waste facilities offer any reuse of small electrical and electronic devices.

7. We confirmed we still don’t have the Right to Repair for most devices we see

Along with our friends in the Open Repair Alliance, we’ve collectively logged data from more than 200,000 repair attempts across 31 countries. So to celebrate our movement’s 15th birthday, we released a report exploring the rise of the global community repair movement, and what that data tells us.

The story that emerges is one of rapid growth and huge enthusiasm for repair, with an estimated 1,000 repairs happening at community events every day!

But we also found that we have a long way to go to secure our Right to Repair; 96% of the electrical and electronic products seen at community repair events aren’t covered by any Right to Repair legislation here in Europe.

6. We’re expanding our community Fixing Factories to more London high streets

Fixing Factories are permanent spaces on our high streets, which allow people to bring in broken electronics and appliances to be fixed for free, while gaining the skills they need to make repairs themselves in the future.

Earlier this year we were delighted to announce that, along with our partners Possible, we’ll be bringing Fixing Factories to three new high streets in London over the next three years.

The new sites will help more Londoners access dedicated repair spaces, learn repair skills and save money by keeping their existing things in use for longer, while also reducing waste and emissions.

5. We stewarded the biggest ever International Repair Day

Repair Day continues to grow and this year was no exception.

From 15th birthday celebrations for Repair Café International in the Hague and an open air repair café in the Grand-Place in Brussels to repair training courses for refugees in Uganda, and a talk by the Australian Repair Network in Brisbane. Repair truly was everywhere!

All told, over 2,000 events in more than 40 countries took place during the Repair Day period, smashing last year’s record!

International Repair Day will return on the 18th of October 2025, so put the date in your diary now.

4. We debated directly with an EU Commissioner

Right to Repair Europe, which we co-founded, continues to push the EU to introduce and strengthen pro-repair policies (more on that below). Just before Repair Day, we organised a webinar introduced by one of the most senior figures in the EU at the time, Didier Reynders, European Commissioner for Justice. We shared our data and perspective, highlighting that for the vast majority of products taken to community repair events, there’s no right to repair in sight.

Making our case directly to EU officials represents a step change in the influence of our campaign and we’re excited to build on this momentum going into 2025.

3. One in twenty MPs have signed our Repair & Reuse Declaration 

Last year, we launched the UK Repair and Reuse Declaration to resounding support from our UK repair network. This year, we wanted to secure political support. And despite the curveball of a purdah period ahead of the election, we’ve done pretty well!

The declaration now has 46 endorsed political endorsements – that includes 33 sitting MPs (and this number is growing by the week), a couple of councils, and Baroness Hayman who has brought repair to the forefront of multiple debates this year.

If you want to ask your MP to sign up – we’ve made it easy!

2. We brought repair into the heart of government

As we’ve been warning for a while, the UK is falling behind our peers in Europe and North America when it comes to giving everyone access to affordable repair.

So in May we took our case to MPs directly by running a repair café in the Houses of Parliament. Along with representatives from community repair groups across the UK, we spoke to more than 30 MPs about the benefits of fixing the things we already have and the specific policies they could introduce to make repair more accessible to everyone.

We’re hoping to go back next year to follow up and get even more politicians on board!

1. We helped make (some) products easier to repair

It hasn’t been easy, but after years of hard work, our European Right to Repair Campaign helped secure important new EU repair rules.

The result is that from mid-2026, manufacturers will have to provide repair services beyond the warranty period, spare parts should be cheaper and manufacturers will be banned from using software to prevent independent repair across the whole EU. Member states are also invited to introduce financial incentives to make repair more accessible and affordable.

While this new Right to Repair Directive will initially only apply to a limited range of products (such as phones and tablets, washing machines, TVs and fridges), it joins other upcoming EU measures and represents a significant step forward in our ongoing campaign for a universal Right to Repair.

For more, check out the Campaign’s overview of current and upcoming EU repair rules.

Phew, what a year! And we didn’t even mention our network passing the pretty spectacular milestone of 2,000 tonnes of CO2e and 250 tonnes of waste saved!

Huge thanks go to everybody who has been part of this journey with us, especially our wonderful community and volunteers. We couldn’t do this without you and look forward to seeing what we can achieve together next year!

We’d also like to thank our partners who helped make some of these milestones happen, including our friends in the Open Repair Alliance and Community Repair Network as well as Tiny Studios and Backmarket.

____

If you would like to support our work through a donation, please consider giving what you feel you can. For a limited time, any donation will be doubled by Aviva, and you’ll be doing a huge thing to help us end our throwaway economy. Thank you.

Donate

It’s that time of year again.. our calendars get booked with Christmas socials; we’re thinking about presents… and the charity appeals for donations start.

And here we are, joining in with our crowdfunding campaign.

We don’t like asking our community for money. Many of you already volunteer your time and energy to run events, help others repair, write to politicians and so much more. Your work drives our shared movement forward and is certainly contribution enough.

So we thought we’d provide a bit of an explainer about where our funding comes from, and why we need to ask for donations from the wider public (alongside others).

We’re scaling a mountain

Firstly, we’re a small team tackling a HUGE challenge. The products we use every day are significant drivers of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss. Extracting the resources required to manufacture them is part of an industry responsible for over 55% of all greenhouse gas emissions globally. Yet despite their hidden impacts, products are discarded too quickly, creating mountains of waste.

At the same time, the companies that make many of these products are some of the richest in the world and generally prefer us to keep buying new instead of keeping our existing stuff in use for longer.

Rewiring the system to end our throwaway economy is no mean feat. That’s why we work with partners, and why connecting and empowering different parts of the repair movement is at the centre of what we do.

We invest in people and communities

The heart and soul of this work is the community repair movement, of which we are a part. Fuelled overwhelmingly by volunteer time and determination, more than 600 repair cafés across the UK, and an estimated 4000 across the world host volunteers that fix people’s things for free. The impact of this is huge. Our recent report estimated that 190,000 things are fixed by community repair groups each year.

But whilst the movement is rooted in the goodwill of volunteers, anyone who has tried to take community repair to the next level – whether it’s establishing regional networks to respond to the overwhelming local demand for repair cafes, or testing innovative on-the-ground approaches to bring repair to more people – will know that you can’t do that without paying staff. And once you start doing that, things get expensive, quickly.

Once you start working across the UK and with international partners: helping global networks to connect, co-leading campaigns to strengthen pro-repair legislation, as well as building tools, resources and infrastructure to support community groups, you need much more staff time.

Restart manages all this with a small but brilliant team equivalent to 6 full time staff (though wouldn’t we love to have more!). But much of this work happens behind the scenes, or comes under the umbrella of sister network brands, which ensure that all partners have ownership.

Of course this is the challenge of building any sort of cross movement infrastructure. And it isn’t unique to our sector.

What is unique is the challenge of funding it.

Funders have other priorities

When you look at the Green Funders’ Network’s reports on what environmental funding from trusts and foundations supports, Consumption and Waste is consistently down at the bottom of the list. It’s a Cinderella issue that receives a fraction of the funding that other sectors receive.

That’s been our experience. There just aren’t many funders that focus on this area. There are a few notable exceptions, and we have been delighted to receive funding from Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and it was huge when we this year secured funding from the National Lottery Community Fund, alongside our partners Possible, to expand our Fixing Factories project over the next three years. But otherwise, helping people to keep things in use for longer is always on the edge of eligible criteria.

So we have to run crowdfunding campaigns, and find alternative sources of income. We’d rather not, because we know that so many in the movement are already giving their time and creativity, that’s why we tend to only run funding campaigns as part of a match funded campaign. That means every pound donated gets doubled by a partner – in this case Aviva.

So if any funders are reading this, we’d love to help you get your teeth into waste and consumption issues. Any businesses want to work with us to fix the system? We’re here to talk.

And for anyone else: Please consider donating what you feel you can. It’ll be doubled by Aviva, and you’ll be doing a huge thing to help us end our throwaway economy.

Donate

For Repair Day 2024, we continued our theme of Repair for Everyone and that meant that part of our goal was to expand events further than we previously had. And we did it! Over 2000 events in over 40 countries took place over the Repair Day period – that’s way more countries than ever before!

As one way to mark the day we published the first report into our global repair data on behalf of the Open Repair Alliance (ORA) called: “The rise of community repair: the people and the data building a movement”. The report delves deep into the data ORA has collected over the years, offering insights into the growth of community repair worldwide as well as the barriers to repair that we still face and the need for stronger legislation to support repair. And this growth of community repair can be no better exemplified than by the amount of activity for Repair Day this year!

Kicking off Repair Day early, the European Right to Repair campaign held a webinar to share findings from the ORA report and to discuss the current state of right to repair regulations in Europe. They were joined by members of the European Commission and representatives of our wider repair network.

Here’s what happened in the UK

There were 120 events in the UK alone this year, with many politicians in attendance to learn about and support their local group’s work. We continued our promotion of the UK Repair and Reuse Declaration and also released some brand new research. For the BREW (Beyond Recycling of E-Waste) report, we investigated rates of reuse at waste facilities across the UK and found that, in the simplest terms, not enough of it is happening. The Community Repair Network teamed up with the online spare parts shop eSpares to offer an exclusive discount for UK-based community repair groups (such as Repair Cafés). A host of MPs visited their local repair cafe for Repair Day (and saw how amazing they are!) and we showed up in media coverage by The Telegraph, BBC Radio, Positive News and more!

Having gained the attention of UK media and repair organisers, we plan to get it on the government’s agenda. Notable events around the UK included, Re:Make Newport’s 3rd birthday celebration, the opening of Repair Cafe Foyle’s new Library of Things, and a cake designing competition by Repair Cafe Portsmouth. 

In Europe

Another huge landmark of the Repair Day period was the 15th anniversary of Repair Cafe International. In the Netherlands, they held an XL repair cafe in The Hague which saw one hundred repairers gather to repair over two hundred items! They also screened a documentary that celebrated all of their impactful work over the last 15 years which will soon be available to watch.

As always, partners across Europe celebrated the occasion in new and exciting ways. In Brussels, Repair Together and Repair&Share teamed up to confer the famous Manneken-Pis with a repairer outfit and hold a repair cafe in the capital. There was huge growth of events in Italy where they more than doubled from last year, combining community repair with activities by members of the Right to Repair campaign. And in France, HOP celebrated a successful second edition of Journeès Nationales de la Réparation with a whopping almost 1500 events listed on our Repair Day map. We also saw the first Repair Day events ever in many countries including: youth maker clubs in Moldova, a repair shop opening in Macedonia, and celebrations in Ukraine, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Monaco, Austria, Hungary and Iceland.

And what went on around the world!

We also saw growth of events in the USA and Canada where over 22 events happened to commemorate the occasion such as, multiple repair events by our friends at Fixit Clinic and Repair Cafe Hudson Valley, and the first annual TCA Tech Repair People Appreciation Week. Further south, our long-time friends at Club de Reparadores organised events in Argentina, Chile and Mexico. And we saw the first Repair Day events ever in Brazil!

In Ghana, Benin, Kenya and Uganda events took place to further repair education, including refugee communities and school children. And Repair Cafe Collective India followed suit, running a series of workshops across the country to teach children about different kinds of repair. They also facilitated an online event bringing together teachers, writers, architects, neuro-psychologists, neuroscientist educators, parents, and filmmakers to speak about repair and maintenance.

We were excited to see that events took place in Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan and South Korea. And of course, repair communities in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia came out in force to celebrate the occasion including a talk on ‘Why Repair Matters’ by the Australian Repair Network.

More than anything, we’re so excited to see this movement growing year on year, reaching new communities and gaining new meaning through it.

Learn more about what went on:

• Our “Beyond Recycling of E-Waste” report
• ORA’s report “The rise of community repair: the people and the data building a movement ”
• Repair Café International’s 15th anniversary celebrations
• HOP’s  National Repair Days

Feature image credited to: Repair&Share

This October marks 15 years since the world’s first repair café was held by Dutch journalist Martine Postma.

In holding the first community run repair event, she sparked a global movement in which communities are (literally) taking matters into their own hands to reject our throwaway economy.

Now we’re telling the story of the rise of community repair. After logging data from more than 200,000 repair attempts across 31 countries over 12 years, we’re releasing a report exploring the rise of the community repair movement, and what that data tells us (more detail below).

Alongside this, we’re telling the story of a wasted opportunity. We found that most people think electricals that are brought to waste facilities in good condition should be kept in use through repair or reuse. But only a fifth of the UK’s waste facilities offer any reuse of small electrical and electronic devices (more detail below).

This highlights the need for government reuse targets to ensure more products are kept in use – targets that are supported by 85% of people.

It also shows the importance of community repair, which is filling a gap and providing an opportunity for people to give their things a second life.

This October we’re celebrating the brilliant repair cafés that are helping people across the world to give their things a second life. We’re seeing repair-themed cakes, we’re watching politicians become repair enthusiasts, and we’re seeing communities take part in the joy of repair. Over 100 fixing events will happen across the UK, from Glasgow to Cardiff; Belfast to Bristol.

Around the world, over 2000 events are planned in over 40 countries from India to Ukraine, the Philippines to Mexico. Activities include 15th birthday celebrations for Repair Cafe International, an open air repair café in the Grand-Place in Brussels, a webinar with an EU commissioner by Right to Repair Europe, repair training courses for refugees in Uganda, and a talk by the Australian Repair Network in Brisbane.

Repair day is Saturday 19th October: Join us in celebrating repair this weekend – and the rest of October. Find resources here.

What do the reports tell us? 

The first Open Repair Alliance report shows rapid growth and huge public enthusiasm for repairs.

In the most recent set of Open Repair Alliance data, there are: 208,491 repair attempts of electrical and electronic items from 19,986 events run by 1,158 community repair groups across 31 countries around the world.

And in the last 12 months from August 2023 to July 2024, the Open Repair Alliance logged nearly 70,000 repair attempts of electronic and electrical items.

That means each month, nearly 6,000 have been logged – nearly 200 repair attempts every day!

Using this data, we can estimate the scale of electrical repair attempts in community repair events across the world. Assuming there are at least 4,000 repair groups around the world, this dataset captures only around 20% of the total electrical repairs performed at community events.

This means there are likely to be approximately 30,000 repair attempts each month, or around 1,000 per day. And a whopping 190,000 successful repairs every year.

Highlighting the huge gap in right to repair legislation

What this data tells us is just how far we have to go before Right to Repair legislation helps us to keep the vast majority of products in use.

Our data shows the main barriers community fixers come up against when repairing products: spare parts not being available is the top barrier (25% of cases) followed by them being too expensive (18%), then not being repairable design (16%).

Only 40 products out of the over 208,000 logged so far, or 0.0002% are covered by existing EU legislation. This is because the most established regulations are for white goods and TVs. People don’t tend to bring dishwashers and fridges into repair cafes! And only a tiny minority of the TVs brought in are recent enough to be covered (introduced to the market from March 2021).

Expanded rules will provide Right to Repair for smartphones and tablets from June 2025, so we have yet to benefit from those. And many products seen at events are well beyond 10 years old. But these are products that simply aren’t supported by existing right to repair legislation.

Read our full report here → 

Beyond Recycling of Electricals: What’s happening in the UK’s waste facilities? 

Last year we discovered that nearly half of the electronic and electrical devices brought for recycling at one household reuse and recycling centre were either fully functional or only needed a light repair. But instead of being repaired and reused, they were sent to the shredder for recycling, representing a missed opportunity to reduce waste, lower emissions and save households money.

This year we wanted to learn how widespread this missed opportunity is across the whole of the UK. So we conducted a citizen science project to gauge what people want to see happen to the things they bring to waste facilities, map the reuse streams available at these sites, and outline what policy changes could help us move beyond recycling. Because reusing these products could reduce waste, lower emissions and save households money.

We found that repair and reuse are incredibly popular among the general public. When asked what they thought should happen to electrical products in good condition that are brought to waste facilities, 85% of respondents to a YouGov survey conducted for this report thought they should be kept in use through being repaired/refurbished (38%) or donated/sold (47%). Only 6% of respondents thought these products should be recycled (full results here).

But despite public expectations, we found that only around half of UK waste facilities (51%) offer any kind of reuse stream for unwanted products. Even where such provision exists, the types of products accepted tend to be limited: less than a fifth (18%) offer a reuse stream for small electronic and electrical equipment. And in most cases, repair is rare for small electronic and electrical equipment (less than 2% of sites).

Read our full report here → 

How can we scale up reuse and repair?

The responsibility for this lack of reuse sits firmly in the hands of national policy. Reuse and repair are widely acknowledged to be more efficient than recycling. But there are no binding requirements or incentives for manufacturers, the public sector or waste management industry, to prioritise reuse.

In fact, although recycling targets and the current Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) requirements include reuse, they inadvertently put manufacturers and local authorities off investing in redistributing reusable items. With a far more established system, combined with the challenge of meeting targets, the emphasis has been on recycling. In the absence of specific reuse targets, there are few real incentives for local authorities to invest in redistributing usable products.

We’re calling for reuse targets: binding requirements to increase reuse in collaboration with local reuse and repair initiatives, separate from recycling targets. Only then will we see the resource, space and creative thinking needed to build an economy around reuse at scale.

Reuse targets and right to repair legislation for all products are two of the policies that we’re calling for in our Repair and Reuse Declaration. We’re delighted to see more than 350 businesses, institutions and repair cafes support it and a growing number of MPs and councils backing it too. Here’s to many more signing up in support this repair day.

We are so excited to announce that we’ve been awarded £1.27 million in National Lottery funding over the next three years—shared with our partners, climate action charity Possible—to bring our innovative Fixing Factories to three new high streets across London.

What is a Fixing Factory?

In 2022, we launched two Fixing Factory pilots in Brent and Camden, creating spaces where people can bring in broken electronics and appliances to be fixed for free, while gaining the skills they need to make repairs themselves in the future.

Fixing Factories generate public interest in repair. They create a series of stepping stones to take people from never having looked inside an electrical item towards, if they wish, fixing for others. They are designed to empower local communities by teaching people how to repair their own stuff. They give broken products a second lease of life, saving people money whilst helping reduce carbon emissions by avoiding the need for new items.

Why do we need a Fixing Factory on every highstreet?

We know that the UK public would love to repair their things more, 73% of Londoners have expressed a willingness to repair items rather than replace them if the process was more straightforward while nearly the same amount of people would like to learn  repair skills to save money. But accessibility remains a hurdle. Nearly two-thirds of people in London say there is a scarcity of nearby repair shops, and it’s too expensive and hard to find other options.

That’s where Fixing Factories come in.

Fixing Factories have already engaged nearly 1,000 people in community repair sessions, saving 1.5 tonnes of e-waste and 40 tonnes of CO2e over the last 2 years.

With this funding we will be able to expand the Fixing Factory network across London over the next three years. We’ll open 3 new sites in Acton, Haringey and either Hackney or Islington, and keep our flagship site in Camden open.

The four sites will develop blueprints for future Fixing Factories, supporting a vision to bring affordable fixing and repair to high streets and communities in the UK. 

Can you help us find a home?

We have the funding, now we’re looking for a home! 

Could you help us with our search for a space in Hackney or Islington? 

Please get in touch with shelini@therestartproject.org if you know of anywhere!

A huge thank you to National Lottery, Climate Action Fund and National Lottery players

This project would not be possible without the grant awarded by the National Lottery, Climate Action Fund, a £100 million commitment over 10 years from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes.

This guest post is by Frank Schoofs, organiser of the Marlow Repair Café and founder of The Repair Finder Ltd.

Summer is music festival season. The news is full of people having fun and dancing. However, the news is also full of pictures of litter and broken or abandoned items strewn across the festival grounds. In fact, 58% of festivalgoers report that they have left, lost or broken something at a festival.

Reducing waste and increasing the life of ‘stuff’ in an easily accessible, affordable way is exactly what the community repair movement is about. There are thousands of Repair Cafés or Restart Parties across the world, including over 600 in the UK alone. Could a “community repair tent” work at a festival too? Would we be able to repair things there and then? Would people even use such a service if it was offered? Which festival would be suitable to trial this?

The Cambridge Folk Festival is not too big (approximately 10,000 visitors), but, crucially, it already has a strong focus on environmental impact. In 2023, it received an Outstanding Certification from A Greener Future. When I pitched the repair concept to the organisers, they were enthusiastic – always a good start! The local community repair umbrella organisation, Cambridge Carbon Footprint, also jumped on board, allowing us to use their insurance policy, renting us a “stock” toolkit for the duration of the event and connecting us into their pool of amazing local volunteers.

And so, on Thursday 25th July, we opened our Community Repair Corner at a music festival, running from 10 am to 5 pm each day. The festival organisers gave us a prime location: a spacious gazebo, right on the approach to the main arena entrance. That meant nearly everyone had to walk past us.

The response was unanimously positive. People walked up to just have a chat about community repair, find their nearest Repair Café or even to ask how they could volunteer with one. Others shuffled up with a “I don’t think you could repair this but…”. In a few cases, visitors knew exactly what needed doing, but just did not have the tools available – so we loaned them tools so they could do the fix themselves.

However, once the reputation of the repair volunteers’ skills got out, the confidence of our visitors increased too. Over four days, we did 133 repairs – and only had to give up on 3 items.

The most common repairs were:

• Collapsed camping chairs (with metal posts)
• The “shoulder” seams worn on folding “seat” camping chairs
• Clothing, bags or rucksacks tears, rips, or broken zips
• Glasses (sunglasses or prescription)
• Holes in air beds or tents
• Shoes with bits coming loose

We also fixed an inflatable unicorn from the kids paddling pool, star-gazing binoculars, a mobility scooter and an artist’s golden jacket 45 minutes before their main stage performance!

People would walk by on subsequent days and give a big thumbs up: “still working!” The best and most concise endorsement came a from a group of passers-by one evening, when the curtains were closed, but our sign was still out: “Repair corner… F*** yeah!”

I believe that our Community Repair Corner served three main purposes:

1. Reduced waste at the festival by (at least temporarily) repairing items.
2. Improved people’s experience at the festival, by (at least temporarily) repairing chairs, glasses, airbeds, umbrellas, clothing.
3. Increased awareness of the (community) repair movement, linking with visitors’ local Repair Café(s). People could observe a Repair Café in a relaxed, open environment, without needing to go to one. Once they see and understand what it is, they are more inclined to visit.

The organisers, visitors and volunteers buzzing afterwards and keen to make the Corner a permanent fixture at future Cambridge Folk Festivals!

A huge thank you to Becky, Hazel, Ella (Cambridge Folk Festival), Sandy (Cambridge Carbon Footprint), Ali, Clive, Gina, Jon, Mark, Mike, Louise, Sam, Tessa (volunteers) for helping to make it happen.

Which other festivals will follow suit and set up a Community Repair Corner?

__

All images from Frank Schoofs, Marlow Repair Café

With a new government in place, we’re ready to pick up the campaign for a UK right to repair!

Please use this opportunity to welcome your newly elected MP and invite them to celebrate repair with you.

The new government presents an opportunity to achieve a real circular economy for the UK, centring repair and reuse. But with talk of the circular economy largely absent from the election campaign and the Labour manifesto, our challenge is the same: we need to build political support for repair and reuse and get it onto the agenda.

So we’ve gathered signatures from supporting organisations and have written to Sir Keir Starmer, highlighting the policies we’re calling for in the Repair and Reuse Declaration. See our joint letter here.

But our real power is in the growing movement that is championing repair and reuse. We know that MPs care about the repair cafes in their constituencies. We know that MPs and Lords alike have become champions of repair after experiencing the joys of their local repair cafes or refurb businesses.

And our opportunity to win over more MPs and show them the joys and benefits of repair and reuse starts now. With International Repair Day only 3 months away, we have a chance to invite our newly elected MPs along to see what we do, why repair is important, and why it needs political support. October also marks 15 years since the first repair cafe, so the timing couldn’t be better.

We’ve designed a printable or online congratulations card for you to send your MP on behalf of your Repair Café or repair business. You can send an online card, or, even better, print one for your repair group and colleagues to all sign, and send it in the post.

We all know that MPs will be bombarded at the moment, so the more creative you can be with your letter or card, the better. Could you make something for them to put on their wall or sit on their desk, which will remind them of you every day?

Find out more about how to get involved in repair day here.

This article first appeared on Forbes.com

New right-to-repair laws in Europe aim to reduce waste, extend product lifespans, and move us past “throw-away” mindsets and products (think: single use plastics, fast fashion, smartphone upgrades). To learn more about the moment and what’s ahead, Ashoka’s Maria Razquin caught up with Ugo Vallauri, co-founder of The Restart Project in the U.K., an organization that focuses on repair and electronics—the fastest growing source of waste in the world.

Maria Razquin: Ugo, you are saying that every product should be repairable and that repairs should be accessible and affordable for everyone. What is your starting point?

Ugo Vallauri: At the most basic level, we want to fix our relationship with the products we buy. This means regaining the confidence to repair products when they break and reconnecting with the “why” this should be a priority. We can all extend the lifespans of the products we own and appreciate the environmental impact of the materials involved in production. At The Restart Project, we also celebrate the power of communities to bring back repair for everyone. We do this through restart parties and repair events throughout the UK. In parallel, we work on legislative changes that can only be achieved by collective will and data drawn from across the movement. The higher-level goal is to consume less, consume better, and reduce our need for new materials.

Razquin: It’s a big moment for repairability in Europe, with the EU taking concrete steps. Tell us more.

Vallauri: Yes, it’s an important moment. We’re starting to see the results of the work that we and others have put in for years. We’re proud to have co-founded the European Right to Repair campaign, a coalition that has grown to include over 150 organizations pushing for ambitious legislation to support the consumer’s right to repair. Product design is one element. So, for example, any entity that wants to sell or distribute a product within the European Union must make that product more repairable by increasing the number of spare parts available, providing repair information and tools required, and so on—or in the case of smartphones, supporting the devices with software updates for at least five years. This change will go into effect in June 2025, while it’s already the case for appliances like washing machines. Most products are not covered yet, though, from headphones to printers and e-bikes, so we need to keep pushing so that every product is repairable.

Razquin: What about plain old durability and building products that last?

Vallauri: Also key. Phones will need to be built to withstand more falls before the screen breaks. Batteries that retain capacity for more cycles will be mandated. And starting in 2027, most electronics will need to be designed with user-replaceable batteries—devices are too often abandoned because replacing the battery is complicated or costly. Manufacturers are lobbying the European Union (EU) for exemptions for this, so it’s essential that organizations like us keep watching! Also, the EU will introduce an online mapping platform listing repair and buyback options, to make repair options visible. But we are concerned that new legislation might not sufficiently tackle the high cost of repairs.

Razquin: Are there examples where repairability has been effectively incentivized? Which countries are leading the way and what can we learn from them?

Vallauri: Yes. We’re seeing financial incentives that make repair far less costly and more attractive. Some exciting examples already exist in Austria, France, and parts of Germany, where repair bonuses and vouchers cut repair costs by up to 50%. This makes a big difference—not only for future products but for products people already own.

Razquin: Digital access and inclusion is another goal of the repair movement. How does making technology that lasts longer expand access?

Vallauri: Whenever you extend the life of a product, it also means that a product one person no longer needs can become useful to another person who can’t afford a brand-new product, locally or globally. But right now, communities with limited financial resources are too often stuck in a trap of buying either non-durable, throw-away products, or second-hand devices that quickly become no longer supported and obsolete So, repair laws will help global digital access.

Razquin: What other global impacts do you anticipate?

Vallauri: We expect that the new European legislation will have an impact beyond the region. Manufacturers will be less likely to make two versions of the same product—one for the EU and another for outside the EU. So, designing for durability and repairability will become more prevalent and we hope eventually the new normal in design, manufacturing and post-sale consumer services. As for things like software support and updates, manufacturers will likely make these accessible to consumers beyond Europe. Refurbished products will become more useful globally, reducing overall electronic waste. If a smartphone with support that lasts for 10 years ends up in a different region of the world as a refurbished product, that refurbished product will be more attractive and useful for longer if it’s fully supported.

Razquin: Inspiring changes! What can everyday consumers do to support this shift to more repairability and durability?

Vallauri: You can start with three things. One, everyone can care and help friends and family care. This is what we’re talking about when we say, “fixing our relationship with electronics.” So, this means maintaining the products you own and trying to protect them from breaking in the first place—making the most of what we already have access to. Two, consider seeking out your local community repair group. I think you’ll find it truly transformational to learn to fix things with the help of someone in your community with more experience. There are thousands of community repair groups across Europe, and the movement is growing globally. You can find many of the groups listed on The Restart Project’s website and on partners such as Repair Cafe International. And three, start to observe and interrogate the over-production and consumption around us. In the same way that you think twice about taking a single use plastic fork or bag, start noticing the compromises we are pushed to make. Tap into existing movements, such as our European coalition. Also, in the U.K., The Restart Project is advocating for a Repair and Reuse Declaration. In the U.S., there’s a strong and growing right to repair movement. And if you live elsewhere and want to bring the repair movement to your country, please get in touch. We would love to connect you to active parts of the movement.

Razquin: Ugo, looking ahead, what would you like to see emerge and become the new norm—and conversely, what habits and mindsets do you imagine disappearing as the repair movement advances?

Vallauri: I want to see manufacturers move away from releasing new versions of the same product so frequently and instead focus on supporting and updating each version for longer. I’d like to see all single-use, throw-away products disappear. And I hope we can all look forward to better access to what we really need—and not be surrounded by noise and useless products! The result will be that we can all participate mindfully in our digital society, while reducing the shocking amount of e-waste we generate.

Ugo Vallauri is an Ashoka Fellow. You can read more about his work here.

This interview is edited for length and clarity.

[Feature image by Mark A Phillips, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]

Yesterday, we took repair into Parliament. After months of red tape, we walked through the gates of parliament with a bag full of tools and some big ideas about how politicians can make repair and reuse easier and more affordable for everyone in the UK.

We were delighted to be able to do actual fixing with and for MPs and their staffers, and those at the event got to experience the joy of a repaired hairdryer whirring into life.

But in reality the fixing was just a part of the experience. What made it such a brilliant event was the buzz of bringing more than 30 MPs together with a microcosm of the movement behind the Repair and Reuse Declaration. We partnered with the brilliant Back Market to create the event, and they, alongside SUEZ recovery and recycling UK and Replace Base brought the business perspective of repair. We had support from our campaigning allies Green Alliance and The Design Council and (the stars of the show) repair cafe representatives from across the nation.

It was striking how many MPs (half of those that attended) came to meet their local repair cafe – or came because one of their constituents asked them to come along. It was inspiring how many of the MPs are genuinely supportive of repair and reuse – the sponsoring MP Helen Hayes nailed it when she said that this is an issue that is so obvious it gets forgotten. And it was brilliant to see more than 11 MPs and peers endorse the Repair and Reuse Declaration then and there.

The event was inspiring, impactful, and it felt like a real life snapshot of the growing movement behind right to repair in the UK.

If you’d like to encourage your MP to support the declaration, now would be a great time: with over 30 politicians signed up, more MPs will be wiling to add their name. E-mail your MP here. 

An important part of our work in London is supporting and building the network of repair groups. There are currently over 30 groups in London, but some boroughs aren’t represented yet. One of our goals is to ensure there is a group in every area in London so people from all parts of London can access repair!

Here’s how we did it in Islington…

Islington fixers

We worked with Islington Council to jump start the community led repair group ‘Islington Fixers’. The group is now led by the wonderful Bel from Islington Climate Centre, who will be hosting repair events at the Climate Centre and other locations around the borough.

Before this, Islington Council’s waste minimisation team were organising repair events around the borough to celebrate key dates like Repair Week and Earth Day. However, they recognised that supporting a community group to take ownership would encourage local residents to get involved more – both with volunteering to fix and bringing stuff in for repair.

Step 1: Scoping potential partners

Using our experience of supporting community repair groups in London and the council’s knowledge of the borough, we mapped out potential partners, which included sustainability groups, community associations, and universities. 

The group needed to be part of a larger constituted organisation so they could apply for funding, claim expenses etc. 

It took around 6 months to find the right partner.  Part of the process was gaining insight into what could be done to remove barriers for groups who wanted to get involved. 

Step 2: Addressing concerns

1. Organisations with a fixed location weren’t willing to do pop up events across the borough.

It was important that the entire borough could access the events, so we wanted to find an organisation able to do this. A secondary option was to go with an organisation that had a central and easily accessible location. 

2. Organisations didn’t feel like they had enough capacity to take something like this on.

We organised a community engagement event to bring more volunteers in to share the work, and to find members who are able to host and organise events. 

3. Organisers were worried about finding and managing volunteers

Our solution was to get the group set up on Restart’s community platform Restarters.net which gives events visibility and access to volunteers.

To address this in the short term, the council agreed to pay for fixers via Restart until the group has established a team of volunteers.

4. Groups were worried about securing funding to run events

The council agreed to contribute a small amount of funds towards the running of each event for things like refreshments and travel expenses

5. Groups wanted to have a first aider to ensure the events were run safely.

The council put one person from the group through first aid training. This person will attend every event. 

6. Groups wanted to have some basic repair tools to get started with

Fixers usually have their own toolkits which they bring along to events. But we didn’t want a lack of tools to be a barrier for volunteers, so the council contributed towards purchasing a small toolkit. We provided a voucher to purchase tools from ifixit (this offer is open to all new community groups) and we lend out a PAT testing machine to groups in London. 

Step 3: Engaging the wider community

After finding a fantastic organisation that was willing to take the lead, Islington Climate Centre, the next step was to hold a community engagement event. Interested groups and individuals were able to get to know each other, find out more about the group and get involved. 

There was a lot  of interest: 20 people attended including  several new fixers who hadn’t previously engaged in community repair before and people who wanted to help host, collect data and be part of the organising team. 

Step 4: The first event

Islington Fixers ran their first event on Jan 20th 2024. There were 6 fixers and 2 hosts, and 30 people brought in items for fixing. Out of the 31 items brought in, a whopping 48% were fixed, and 45% had their faults diagnosed but will need a spare part or extra time to get them up and running again. This translates to 22 kg of waste and 391 kg of carbon emissions being prevented! 

You can read about how it went over on Islington Climate Centre’s website. 

Step 5: Regular fixing events in Islington

Islington Fixers will now run at least 6 repair events each year. The council will support them with promotion, finding a venue and choosing the dates. Islington Council will put a core volunteer through first aid training so there is always someone able to administer first aid, and they’ll provide the refreshments and supply a toolkit so new fixers popping in can get stuck in straight away! 

Our learnings

• A key requirement for starting a volunteer community group is to have a core organising team to plan events, recruit and manage volunteers. 
• You need to have a good understanding of the borough to build local connections. 
• The most difficult part of this process was finding a group of volunteers able to take the lead on the project, so you’ll need to allow plenty of time for this. 
• It’s important to discuss what the strengths and needs of the group are and tailor support accordingly. 
• The group needed to be constituted to allow them to apply for funding, send invoices etc. 
• If the ideal lead group isn’t constituted , then the repair group could come under another organisation. For example Hackney Fixers operates under the Sustainable Hackney umbrella. 

Last year, we spent a week examining every electronic and electrical device brought into a household reuse and recycling centre in West London. We tested hundreds of devices destined for the recycling shredder. And, shockingly, we found that almost half of them could have been reused instead.

As we noted at the time, while lots of products should be recycled, many shouldn’t be anywhere near the recycling bin. Instead they should be living a longer, or a second life in the hands and the homes of people that can use them. By focusing exclusively on recycling, we’re wasting more than we need to. Based on this study, we estimated that over 30,000 perfectly reusable small electrical and electronic products could be “wasted” in recycling skips at Household Waste and Recycling Centres (HWRCs) – every week.

Our experience in West London left us with a lot of questions. But one that’s stuck with us is this…

How many HWRCs actually offer reuse options for electrical devices in the UK?

We know that in some parts of the UK, waste authorities and waste management companies are testing out ways to separate reusable items from waste. We’ve even seen some of these in action. But industry insiders tell us that reuse remains rare, especially for electronic and electrical products. If true, this means we’re missing a huge opportunity to reduce waste and make the most of the products we have.

Right now, it’s hard to assess the state of reuse because there is surprisingly little public information about how common these initiatives are across the country. So now we plan to look into this ourselves and we need your help!

Help us answer this question

We’re looking for volunteers to join us on a deep dive into the world of Household Waste and Recycling Centres. Together we’ll investigate how many offer opportunities to reuse products, and we’ll have conversations with the staff on the ground about their work and the barriers they may face to moving beyond just recycling.

Don’t worry if you don’t know anything about waste management yet. We’ll brief you on everything you need to know.

All you need to take part is an internet-connected device and a sense of curiosity!

This project is supported, in part, by IMPETUS.

IMPETUS is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 101058677. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Following the news can make it feel like people are more divided than ever. But here’s one thing most of us agree on: reusing products and repairing them when they break reduces our impact on the planet, saves us money and can be incredibly rewarding. Repair is a valuable skill that can lead to employment, and volunteer-led repair events like ours help build reslient local communities. It’s no surprise then that four out of five people in the UK want the government to do more to support repair.

But our politicians don’t seem to have noticed.

So we’re bringing repair and reuse to them! On the 7th of May 2024, we’re running a repair event inside the Houses of Parliament to show them first hand why repair and reuse matter and how the right policies can make it more accessible for all of us.

Over the course of the two-hour drop-in event, we’ll invite MPs to learn about:

• how repair can help solve the problem of e-waste and reduce the upstream impacts of making new products
• the limitations to the UK’s current and exclusive focus on recycling
• the thriving landscape of Repair Cafés and other community repair groups in the UK
• the UK Repair & Reuse Declaration and the five key policies we’re calling for

We’ve teamed up with our partners in the Community Repair Network to make sure that communities across the UK are represented and with refurbished tech seller Back Market to bring in the voice of business too.

We have invited all MPs to drop by. But if you’re based in the UK, we need your help to make sure you local MP comes along. As a constituent, you have real influence when it comes to your MP’s choices.

Please consider asking your MP to attend, using our simple tool below:

This event has now taken place!  The tool to invite your MP is now closed.  A huge thanks to those that invited your MP.

This post is by Fiona Dear, originally posted on the Green Alliance blog.

The UK is currently the world’s second top producer of electrical waste per person. ¹

That fact tends to surprise people, but more surprising is that, until recently, very little was being done about it. For those interested in tackling the UK’s e-waste it’s been a bit like waiting for the proverbial bus: we wait years for any substantial policy opportunities, and then two come along at once.

First, for the past few months we’ve been working with Peers for the Planet, Green Alliance and the Design Council to support a right to repair amendment to the Digital Markets Bill, tabled by Baroness Hayman. Consumer rights aspects of Right to Repair legislation ensure that we can all get the support we need from producers to keep our electrical products going for longer. It was unfortunately withdrawn at the report stage last week, but the work already done unearthed strong cross party support for right to repair in principle and it has given us something to build on.

The opportunity more people will have heard of is the recent consultation on reforming what happens to waste electrical and electronic equipment (known as WEEE). The last time the WEEE system was reformed was a decade ago and we’ve been waiting three years for this one, so it was a big deal.

Government’s focus remains firmly on recycling

The proposals the consultation focused on were around getting more waste electricals out of people’s drawers, cupboards and household bins, and into the recycling stream. Headline measures that will make it easier to put our waste electricals in the right place include kerbside collections of e-waste and mandatory producer and retailer – including online – take back schemes.

The chances are, you’ll have heard of the retailer take back proposal under the misleading moniker: the ‘toaster tax’. The British Retail Consortium has been in uproar about retailers of a certain size having to take back any electrical product, whether they’ve just sold a new one or not. The argument is that this cost will be passed onto consumers and will equate to a £1 billion tax. The problem with this argument is who should pay for it then? The point of extended producer responsibility regulations is that the environmental costs of the stuff we use are captured in the market price. If those costs are not shouldered by those producing or making money from selling the product or by those buying it, who should pay for it instead? The taxpayer, or maybe Defra, the government agency responsible for our environment? It obviously doesn’t make sense to downplay the environmental cost of electricals that we are replacing ever more frequently, as the consequences of our throwaway economy will have to be picked up by someone eventually and, if not us, it will be future generations or other countries.

Restart agrees it should be easier for people to pass on their electrical products in a way that makes the best use of the resources inside them, and that producers and retailers should absorb that cost. Does that mean we love these new proposals? Not exactly. We argue they should go further.

This is a once in a decade opportunity

It’s well established that prioritising repair, reduction and reuse wastes fewer resources and reduces carbon emissions. So, rather than tinkering with a waste system that revolves around recycling, we should use this moment to embrace a truly circular economy, centred on repair and reuse, and the reduction of the amount of e-waste we produce in the first place.

It won’t be easy. It requires an overhaul of how things are done. But, 30 years ago, we didn’t know how to recycle at scale. The recycling regulations we have aren’t perfect — we’re still not meeting our recycling targets for instance – but they have created the conditions for a huge recycling industry to spring up.

If Defra could create the right conditions, we could be looking back in 30 years and seeing now as the moment when reuse and repair were revived.

The call for evidence that accompanied the WEEE consultation started to do this. We were encouraged to see some policies we’re calling for in our repair and reuse declaration being explored. Such as reuse targets that would reward waste processors for reusing or reselling products more than for recycling them. We found out last year that almost half of the small waste electricals sent for recycling at household waste and recycling centres could be easily reused, so regulations to encourage reuse are sorely needed. Or ecolabelling of products, like the French repair index, which has been shown to help consumers choose more repairable products, and which has had a knock on effect on manufacturers’ support for repair. Or a ban on the destruction of unsold goods. I don’t really need to say anything more about that.

These are all important policies, but what we need is a joined up, overarching strategy that aims to keep things in use longer, reduce what we’re throwing away and reduce the reliance on buying new.

Efforts to make it easier to expand the collection of e-waste from people and businesses is a perfect opportunity to retain value in products, especially as it will help to minimise damage in transit. But this will only be the case if reuse is made central to system design.

Philip Dunne of the Environmental Audit Committee recently called out the government for its inaction to tackle our  “e-waste tsunami”. Will the WEEE call for evidence lead to a more strategic approach? We shall see, but let’s hope we don’t have to wait another three years to find out.

(Feature image by Mark A Phillips, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

_____

^1. Source: The Global E-waste Monitor 2024

Recently, our co-founder Ugo gave a TEDx Talk on our journey through repair, and the importance of repair communities in raising awareness, championing repair, documenting repair barriers, and pushing for system change.

At a time when manufacturers are starting to wake up to the inevitability of a right to repair, we’re proud to be making progress on a set of issues that was completely ignored by the policy agenda just a decade ago. Yet, we’re aware that the throwaway economy is still strong, greenwashing is thriving, and recycling is still celebrated as the main pillar of the “circular economy” – while repair and reuse are barely taken into account. We need to profoundly rethink the way products are manufactured, consumed and reused if we are to truly slow down the global use of resources and embrace a just transition.

Policy improvements are urgently needed, and they’re not coming fast enough, in the UK, Europe or elsewhere. We will continue to raise awareness and demand a real and universal right to repair, and to put an end to planned obsolescence. But none of this would be happening without the efforts of tens of thousands of repair volunteers around the globe, bringing back hope and sharing skills through community groups. Restart Parties, Repair Cafes, Fixit Clinics, and all other types of groups promoting repair are at the heart of making this movement stronger and more effective. Will you join us?

1. Support the UK Repair and Reuse Declaration

Last October, we launched the UK Repair and Reuse Declaration – a call for UK policymakers to unlock the huge potential of repair and reuse. Over 250 repair cafes, businesses and other institutions have signed up, as well as MPs from parties across the spectrum.

We’re aiming to get 100 MPs to sign up before the summer. So if yours hasn’t signed yet, please ask your MP to sign using our super simple tool. It only takes a minute!

If you run a repair group, MPs love what you do! So, please use this template letter to tell them about your group, and invite them along to your next event (while asking them to sign the declaration).

2. Tell the government why repair and reuse matters to you [WEEE Reform]

Make the most of this rare chance to make your voice heard: submit evidence to the government’s e-waste consultation yourself or on behalf of your community group, organisation or business.

To make it easier, we’ve identified the relevant questions and written template answers for you to adapt in your own submission. The deadline is the 7th of March 2024.

Find instructions and our template answers you can adapt here.

3. Plan for International Repair Day 2024

Repair Day is back! This year it falls on the 19th of October, but it’s never too early to start planning. How will you celebrate the day? Can you invite your MP or get local media coverage? We’re working on some exciting plans too, which will share soon.

In the meantime, stay in the loop by signing up for our newsletter below.

Featured image: Mark A Phillips

Heard murmurings about the recent EU legislation but don’t know what it means? Don’t worry, we’re here to debrief about some pretty big steps forward for EU consumer rights of repairability – progress which the European Right to Repair Campaign has worked on tirelessly over the last year. 

It’s a huge piece of legislation because for the first time, it goes beyond just mandating design requirements for products (the “ecodesign” regulations which for example will make future smartphones more repairable from 2025 – at least in the EU, no word yet on the UK government’s adopting these!) and instead focuses on obligations for manufacturers and sellers to try to ensure that consumers actually can get their products repaired. 

There was a lot of media hype surrounding the agreement among EU institutions, with claims that this secures a full right to repair…we disagree and here’s why: 

Now, we’re happy that this legislation starts tackling some of the barriers to repair that we’ve been documenting for many years. For example, by asking that repair prices are “reasonable”, it helps to not deter people from repairing. But we’ll have to see how this plays out in practice, as reasonable is not easy to quantify. A second massive barrier is the use of parts-pairing to limit the use of second-hand or compatible spare parts. The directive should tackle this aspect, but we know the devil is in the details and we suspect manufacturers will try to find loopholes. 

A major sticking point for us is that most of the legislation only covers the same product categories for which design requirements already exist. It fails to address the current shortcomings of many manufacturers, neither providing parts nor repair services for products like small kitchen appliances (kettles, toasters, coffee makers…), audio products (like headphones) and many more of the items frequently seen at repair events.

It’s not all bad though! Interestingly, the legislation extends the total legal guarantee of a repaired product by 12 months, therefore incentivising consumers to choose repairs – rather than replacements during the legal guarantee period. This will not however prevent manufacturers and retailers from offering an instant replacement product instead, which might be more appealing for those who are pressed for time. So it’s hard to estimate the actual impact this will have in slowing down our growing e-waste mountain.

Why else is this legislation important to Restart’s mission?

• We seem to be trendsetters in mapping repair, with the EU moving towards mandatory mapping of all repair options – something that we’ve been prototyping at Restart on a smaller scale and advocating for via London Repairs for years 
• We hope that there will be a huge impact from EU member states being required to promote repair. They’ll have to adopt one of four strategies including, instituting repair funds/vouchers; VAT reduction for repair; information campaigns promoting repair; and funding to support community repair initiatives. How these options are implemented may vary massively from country to country, but there’s major potential here!

What about the UK? 

The Right to Repair Directive doesn’t change anything in the UK, other than further highlighting the UK’s delay to address regulations on repairability. This is why we are working hard on growing the list of organisations, politicians and businesses that support our Repair and Reuse Declaration. 

We are currently working with Peers for the Planet to add right to repair into a consumer rights bill in the UK, and making sure that the voice of the repair movement is heard in the current WEEE (waste electricals) reform consultation. 

So what’s next?

The unrelenting efforts of the Right to Repair Campaign have shown that progress is possible! But it won’t happen without an alliance of community repair activists, repair organisations, businesses promoting repairs and environmental organisations. No one in the media remembered to share that the original proposal from the European Commission was virtually empty, and that the repair friendly position by the Parliament – endorsing many of our campaign’s demands – was weakened by member states, evidently successfully lobbied by manufacturers. 

We’ll keep putting pressure on these issues with partners in the UK and in the EU, working towards a real and universal right to repair!

We’ve attached the press release from the European Right to Repair campaign below. Keep an eye on the campaign’s website for a full assessment of the agreed text in the near future.

New EU law sets to make repair more affordable for selected products, campaigners push for widespread right to repair

[Images courtesy of Mark A Phillips, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]

2023 was huge for The Restart Project and for repair in general. As the year draws to a close and with so much to celebrate, let’s look back at our top ten moments…

#10 – Mapping repair groups across the UK

It’s hard to believe, but the UK has never had a single map or list of all community repair groups across the country. Until this year! We teamed up with our partners in the Community Repair Network and Repair Café International to create the UK’s most comprehensive map of Repair Cafés, Restarters groups and other community repair projects – even we were surprised to learn that there are over 500 repair groups around the country!

#9 – Pushing for a universal Right to Repair

Together with our partners in the European Right to Repair campaign, we focused on the affordability of repair, an issue rarely tackled by legislation. Specifically, we’ve been pushing for a universal Right to Repair in an upcoming piece of EU legislation called the Right to Repair Directive, which aims to tackle the consumer rights aspect of repair.

This is not about the way products are designed. Instead, it’s about how manufacturers facilitate or impede the repair of products, including by setting prohibitive prices for spare parts. We came up with a very creative stunt—“The Price is Right”—in front of the EU Parliament that shocked MEPs with the high price of parts. We also published a fun video highlighting the perverse incentives to replace products, rather than repairing them.

Can’t see the video above? Watch it on YouTube here.

#8 – Publishing over 70,000 more records of repair data

As the main driving force behind the Open Repair Alliance, we collect, collate, clean and publish data about repairs attempted at community events around the world. This data, originally recorded by the Alliance’s growing number of data partners, is used by researchers, campaigners and companies to learn more about why products break and how they could be made easier to fix.

This year we broke all previous records by releasing data on a whopping 70,000 additional repair attempts, bringing the overall total to over 130,000 records.

#7 – Winning an award for our work with repair data

Publishing all that repair data is only one aspect of our work with data. Over the years, we’ve enlisted the help of our amazing community to analyse data and gain new insights into the environmental benefits of repair and the most common reasons certain products break. In turn, these findings have helped us push for Right to Repair policies, including more repairable smartphones and tablets (more on that below)!

So this year we were thrilled to win the prestigious European Union Prize for Citizen Science—Digital Communities Award! A huge thank you and congratulations to all of you in our community!

#6 – Starting the Student Repair Revolution

Engaging young people is a perennial challenge for the community repair movement. So this year, we teamed up with partners from the Community Repair Network to launch the Student Repair Revolution! Together, we’re working with university groups up and down the country, supporting and encouraging them to try whatever repair events work for them in their university and wider community.

#5 – Uncovering the waste behind recycling

In March, we spent a week testing all electrical products brought for recycling at a London reuse and recycling centre. We wanted to see whether they reusable. Shockingly, we found that almost half of the devices destined for recycling could be reused. All told, our study highlighted a huge opportunity to potentially divert over 30,000 products from the waste stream in the UK per week.

#4 – Co-organising the biggest ever gathering for UK community repair

In September, we partnered with Repair Cafe Wales to run Fixfest UK 2023. Over 120 representatives from community repair groups, universities, repair businesses, public bodies, waste agencies and more across the UK gathered in Cardiff for a memorable day of conversations, stories and inspiration. Together, we discussed how to make repair the norm in the UK and the roles we play within our own communities.

#3 – Launching the UK Repair & Reuse Declaration

After months of consultation with partners, members of the Community Repair Network and allied companies, we launched the UK Repair & Reuse Declaration. The Declaration calls on UK lawmakers to introduce five (overwhelmingly popular) policies that can help repair and reuse flourish across the country.

Since launching on International Repair Day in October, over 240 repair cafés, NGOs, businesses and MPs have signed up! Learn more and add your voice here.

#2 – Celebrating the largest International Repair Day yet

And speaking of International Repair Day, this year’s was the biggest ever! Our theme was ‘Repair for Everyone’ and we were delighted to see it playing out in practice with over 1,500 official events listed from the arctic circle to Aotearoa New Zealand’s southern island and hundreds of places in between.

We’re already thinking about how to make the next Repair Day even bigger. So save the date: the 19th of October 2024!

For inspiration, learn more about what happened on Repair Day 2023.

#1 – Securing more repairable smartphones and tablets

In a huge win for the Right to Repair, the EU passed new rules for smartphones and tablets, making them last longer and be easier to repair!

For new models released from June 2025, both independent repairs and end-users in the EU (and possibly beyond) will have access to repair information and (some) spare parts for at least 7 years after a product is taken off the market. In many cases, batteries will need to be user-replaceable. Manufacturers will also need to offer software and security updates for at least 5 years. The new rules will additionally introduce an EU-wide repair index for smartphones.

The European Right to Repair campaign, which we co-founded, had been pushing hard for these rules. And while we didn’t get everything we wanted, they are an important step towards a more repairable future. We can’t wait to build on this success!

Thank you!

Restart has always been people-powered and we couldn’t have done any of this without the support from our community, partners and allies. So, thank you to all of you who have helped us achieve so much this year. We can’t wait to keep building on what we’ve accomplished together in 2024!

___

Featured photo: Mark A Phillips

For Repair Day 2023, we wanted Repair for Everyone and that meant organising a celebration that was bigger than it’s ever been before. The global repair community really pulled it out of the bag, with over 1600 events registered on the Open Repair Alliance map and many more happening across the month. 

Here in the UK, we launched the Repair and Reuse Declaration in a bid to make our slogan real. We’re asking our government to support repair and reuse culture to thrive by enshrining the Right to Repair in law, and directing funding and resources into cultivating a healthy and flourishing circular ecosystem in the UK. Repair groups across the UK invited their local politicians to see what they do in person and learn about the value of community repair. 

Want to learn more about what we’re asking for? You can visit repairreusedeclaration.uk to read our asks and email your local MP to ask them to support the cause. 

Repairing around the world

In Europe, the Right to Repair campaign was also making itself heard. In a bid to amplify the need for affordable spare parts, they held an event in Brussels, bringing together members of the EU parliament, climate NGOs and youth representatives to participate in a game of “The Price is Right – Repair Edition”. 

In other parts of Europe, groups in countries including Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark held hundreds of repair cafés and community outreach events. In the Netherlands, a new children’s show featuring repair was premiered in cinemas across the country – with accompanying repair events.

Further afield, there were Repair Day events happening all across the Northern US and a couple in Argentina and Mexico too! Our friends at Club de Reparadores held their first event in Querétaro in collaboration with Revuelta Club.

There were lots of youth outreach and educational events by our friends in Africa. In Benin, Les 100tinel Fix Club held an event for school children to repair their teaching supplies. And in Uganda, Community Creativity for Development ran training courses for women at the Ocean village Rhino Camp Refugee Settlement – putting into practice the idea that repair really is for everyone! From India to Korea to New Zealand, communities in every continent took part, highlighting that our movement truly is global.

We could see the reach of Repair Day 2023 through the presence of all of you online too! Our social media cards popped up in over eight different languages which is always amazing to see. 

And don’t worry if you missed out on the fun, we’re already putting our heads together to make Repair Day 2024 bigger still! Stay tuned for more over the coming months.

We’re delighted to launch our new Repair and Reuse Declaration to celebrate Repair Day, with a whopping 125 (and counting) groups signed up. The Declaration is supported by more than 100 community repair groups alongside NGOs and businesses like The Design Council, Keep Britain Tidy, Back Market and SUEZ recycling and recovery UK. 

Check out and sign the declaration

Why a new declaration, and why now? 

Throwaway products are fuelling climate change, growing our toxic waste mountain, and they’re ripping off the British public: people are stuck in a cycle of throwing away and buying costly new electronics. Right now, the UK is the second highest producer of electronic waste in the world per capita, but there is little happening to fix this in central government. 

We know that repair is popular. We know most people don’t like throwing away things that they see as having value. So there’d be little risk of public backlash if politicians were to make repair easier. Meanwhile local authorities, waste companies and even many manufacturers and retailers agree that reuse and repair are preferable to recycling. 

A YouGov poll we commissioned for Repair Day found that only 28% of Brits were able to successfully fix, or have fixed, their last electrical item that broke. 47% of those polled didn’t try to, or were unable to repair their last broken electrical item, and the top reasons for that were that repair was too expensive (38%), and that it was quicker to replace it (33%).

So why is there no political effort to make repair and reuse easier and cheaper in the UK? Because it’s complicated. There’s no silver bullet solution to making reuse and repair more common and accessible. And tackling this challenge is at the bottom of a long list of priorities for the government departments responsible. Most politicians aren’t hearing that there’s public demand for a better repair and reuse system. 

So our challenge is to raise the profile of repair and reuse, and get them on the political agenda. We had the Manchester Declaration, launched in 2018, and there were still groups and MPs signing up to it. But we needed to make this support more visible to politicians, and whilst we were at it, we decided to have a refresh, and include some of the policies that could really make a difference. 

So.. drumroll… the Repair and Reuse Declaration was born, co-created by many of those active in the sector: from community repair groups with lived experience of the barriers to fixing; to national policy experts familiar with the opportunities and barriers to creating change.

The new declaration will help to show the breadth of support for keeping our products in use for longer. Please help us raise the profile of these issues and build political support for tackling them at RepairReuseDeclaration.UK. 

What are we asking for? 

The declaration calls for politicians to support repair and reuse by implementing 5 key policies. A YouGov poll commissioned for the declaration launch showed strong support for all of these measures – polling results are indicated in brackets below (see note 1 for survey details).  

We ask UK government to: 

• Make repair more affordable, through tax reductions (80% support) and repair vouchers (79% support).

• Expand the UK’s right to repair regulations to cover all consumer products, strengthen design standards and remove barriers to repair for everyone (85% support). 

• Introduce a repair index to help the public choose more repairable and durable products (80% support). 

• Introduce requirements and targets for reuse and repair to be prioritised over recycling and providing investment to make this a reality. This should be a key part of amended extended producer responsibility rules (83% support).

• Support a new generation of repairers through repair training, accreditation and apprenticeships (85% support).

For more information on why these policies are important, and examples of what people are doing in other countries see here. 

We hope you can join in and get your MP on board.  Here’s to a future where business models and behaviours like reuse, repair, rental and borrowing are always prioritised, and throwaway products are a thing of the past.

Sign the declaration

Note 1:  The poll was commissioned by The Restart Project. All figures are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2,051 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 12th – 13th October 2023. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).

(Image by Mark A Phillips, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Why it’s important and what others are doing

Repair and reuse are affordable and easy ways to end frustration with in-built obsolescence. They’re central to achieving a truly circular, less wasteful, and resilient economy, help to tackle climate change and achieve our net zero ambition. And they can reduce living costs for UK households and create skilled green jobs. 

With the Repair and Reuse Declaration, we’re asking UK legislators and decision-makers at all levels to support repair and reuse to thrive, including: 

1. Make repair more affordable, through tax reductions and repair vouchers 

Repair vouchers: Austria set up a national repair voucher scheme in 2022, which effectively subsidised the cost of professional repairs by allowing families to obtain a rebate of 50% of the price of a repair, up to €200 per year. A previous Upper Austrian trial, found that 40% of the beneficiaries wouldn’t have chosen repair without the voucher scheme.  

France has since initiated an innovative repair voucher scheme in 2023, funded by Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) income. This route to financing the scheme could be applicable to the UK, as it effectively uses part of the existing contributions from manufacturers to extend the lifetime of products and prevent products from prematurely entering the e-waste stream.  

Cutting VAT on repairs: A recent study by Green Alliance showed 54% of people surveyed in the UK support green VAT measures like this. Only 12% oppose. And it could contribute to creating 34,000 jobs in the repair economy. 

A number of businesses, from spare parts providers (Replace Base) to manufacturers are currently calling for the UK government to remove VAT on spare parts and repair services to reduce the cost of repair. Sign the Replace Base petition here. 

More information: You can hear more about other financial incentives for repair from the European Right to Repair.

2. Make repair easier: Expand the UK’s right to repair regulations to cover all consumer products, strengthen design standards and remove barriers to repair for everyone. 

The UK has existing ecodesign legislation, some of which covers resource efficiency and repair for a limited set of products including white goods and TVs. They mandate that manufacturers must make service manuals and some spare parts for these products available to professional repairers for 7 to 10 years after retiring a product from the market. Now it’s time to expand this “right to repair” legislation so that it’s fit for purpose in our rapidly changing consumer goods economy. This means: 

• Expand and strengthen Ecodesign regulation to cover all electronic and consumer products, ensuring that all new consumer electricals must be designed for easy reparability before they can be introduced to the market. 

• Ensure that all people have access to service manuals, so consumers, community repair groups and independent repairers have the information they need to fix these products. And ensure all people can access spare parts for at least 10 years after a product is removed from the market. 

• Ensure that software and security updates are provided for at least 5 years after a product comes off the market.For phones, laptops and, increasingly other products like smart fridges that are connected to the internet, ongoing security updates are needed to protect households from hacking risks. Ongoing software support is needed to keep the products functioning as they should.Too often, this software and security support ends within a few years, far before the useful lifetime of the product ends. This means too many products become obsolete too early, which increases electronic waste – or puts consumers at risk. There are currently no UK requirements for minimum support periods.After a recent successful campaign in the USA led by the brilliant PIRG, Google extended its support for Chromebooks, widely used in schools, to 10 years, for all models released since 2021. Doubling the life of Chromebooks could cut carbon pollution equivalent to taking 900,000 cars off the road for a year and result in $1.8 billion in savings for schools in the US.The EU has recently expanded its ecodesign regulations to cover smartphones and tablets, mandating that from June 2025 manufacturers will have to make software and security updates available for new models for at least 5 years after removing a product from the market, as well as making spare parts and repair information available for at least 7 years.

3. Introduce a repair index to help the public choose more repairable and durable products

UK consumers aren’t able to easily find out how repairable products are when purchasing new items. This means they buy products that they have to replace sooner than they’d like, and there’s little incentive for manufacturers to make products repairable. 

A repair index has been in place in France since 2021. This is similar to the existing eco rating we have for energy use on appliances now, but based on how easy it is to repair each product. For this, manufacturers self-assess the repairability of their products based on agreed criteria. This is then displayed as a single score from 0-10, displayed prominently alongside the price. 

Analysis of the french repair index after the first year showed that: 

• 55% of people were aware of the index 
• 76% of those aware, said it was useful for their purchase
• Consumers tended to prefer products with a higher repairability score. 
• This consumer shift, alongside upcoming EU legislation has resulted in companies improving the repairability of their products

We need a repair index in the UK so that consumers can make informed choices about the products they buy. 

4. Save reusable products from being wasted: Introduce requirements and targets for reuse and repair to be prioritised over recycling, and provide investment to make this a reality. This should be a key part of amended Extended Producer Responsibility rules. 

In our recent study of small appliances taken to a Household Reuse and Recycling Centre, we found that almost half of the electrical products sent for recycling during the study could have remained in use if reuse and repair processes had been in place: 

• 36% of all small electricals headed for recycling were still working. 
• An additional 10% of items assessed only needed simple, low cost repairs. 
• It was estimated that across the UK this could mean that over 30,000 usable electrical products, with a potential resale value of up to £5,000 are being recycled every week. 

Although recycling targets and the current Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) requirements include reuse, they inadvertently dissuade manufacturers and local authorities from investing in redistributing reusable items. With a far more established value chain, the emphasis has been on the challenge of meeting recycling targets. 

The solution: An overhaul of the current EPR rules is needed to drive the establishment of local and national infrastructure to keep products in use for longer, saving people money and using our resources more efficiently. This should include separate reuse targets, prioritised over recycling and additional targets for overall waste reduction. EPR could also be better used to drive improvements in product design and could help fund initiatives to support reuse and repair such as repair vouchers (mentioned above).

5. Support a new generation of repairers through repair training, accreditation and apprenticeships. 

The Chartered Institution for Wastes Management estimates that for the transition to a circular economy, 20,000 repair and reuse jobs will be needed by 2030, with 80,000+ needed by 2040. Green Alliance estimates that an effective and expanded circular economy could help create over 450,000 jobs by 2035. Upstream, there is significant demand for designers who can create repairable products. 

Repair cafes are frequently oversubscribed, with public demand for repair far outstripping fixing capacity at the volunteer-run events. Yet as public demand for repair and preloved products, and as the need for competent and safe repair of our appliances increases, we are losing skilled repairers. Even where jobs are guaranteed by manufacturers offering repair services, recruitment of new repairers is challenging.  

This is having a knock on effect: Courses for repair technicians are dwindling due to reduced demand and there are currently no accreditation options available for electrical repair training. So there are few options, and fewer incentives, for those that want to learn repair skills. 

The solution: Alongside the measures needed to build demand and infrastructure for a strong repair and reuse economy outlined above, we need investment in repair skills to drive the economy. This means introducing an accreditation scheme for repair professionals, funding specific skills interventions like Skills Bootcamps on repair and green design, building repair apprenticeship options and including repair into existing engineering and design apprenticeships.

All of the policies above enjoy overwhelming public support. A YouGov poll commissioned for the declaration launch showed that between 79% and 85% of the general public strongly support or tend to support every measure (see note 1 for survey details).

The move to our throwaway economy has been a slow creep, and the measures needed to give reuse and repair a boost are numerous and complex. There are many more options for stimulating repair and reuse, but these policies are a start in the shift towards a truly circular economy. 

__

Please find here a more detailed policy briefing to share with your MP.

Note 1: The poll was commissioned by The Restart Project. All figures are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2,051 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 12th – 13th October 2023. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).

(Photo by Mark A Phillips, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Repair Day is on October 21st and we want Repair for Everyone. While we, as a collective, have made a huge difference to the public perception and resurgence of repair, it’s still not accessible to everyone. Why? Well, With manufacturers preventing repair of their products for profit and a lack of incentive by the government to support repair, fixing is often either too difficult, costly or time-consuming for people. By repairing and reusing your things, you can save money and the environment. We’re calling for a real Right to Repair, so that repairing your stuff can be an option for everyone.

Do you have an event planned to mark the day? Add it to our map using this form so that we can see what the repair community is doing across the globe!

You can access the toolkit for promoting the event here, including materials in multiple languages.

There are currently more than 1000 events listed on the ORA Repair Day map – and that’s not all of them! The European Right to Repair campaign is strong as ever, and this Repair Day fixers all over Europe are going to be writing to their politicians, recording video messages at community events and joining a special action outside the EU Parliament in Brussels. In the UK, repairers are recognising that the system is broken, and will be calling on government to introduce policies to make repair and reuse the norm.

Over 70 repair events are already registered in the UK, hundreds of repair events will be taking place in France, and Repair Café Denmark will be awarding the Danish Repairability Prize on the day. There are events listed in Norway, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Italy, and we expect to see more pop up in the coming weeks!

In the Netherlands, they’re especially encouraging children to get involved in repair with the premiere of a new kids drama about repair. Over 30 cinemas will be screening the show and holding repair cafes so that children can get an intro to fixing in real time.

In Germany, Round Table Repair Germany and INKOTA together with their partners e.g. Netzwerk Reparatur-Initiativen, will present their petition for a nationwide repair bonus to the Federal Ministry of Environment, so far the petition has over 65,000 signatories. And FixFirst are holding a human vs. AI fixing battle in Berlin.

In Belgium, Repair & Share and Repair Together are highlighting repair in schools, organisations, youth movements, village squares, the heart of cities, libraries, and more. In Wallonia, a repairathon will be held to attempt to fix as many items as possible on the day.

Les 100tinel Fix Club in Porto-Novo, Benin will be holding events in schools to try and fix their resources. And in Uganda, Community Creativity for Development will be running a two day training course for a group of 15 women, who will showcase what they’ve learned at an event for Repair Day. You can help fund this event here, if you are able to donate.

Our friends at Repair Cafe Hudson Valley are busy holding repair cafes up in the North-East of the US, and there are events scattered around the country. In Mexico, Estrategia Circular MX are hosting a circular economy webinar, and Revuelta Club are holding their first repair event in Querétaro, as part of the Club de Reparadores network.

And if you can’t reach any of these events in person, Cherwell Collective are running an online event to reach people in communities who don’t have access to a local repair group. You can engage with fixing online using the Global Fixers Discord server where repairers at international events will be answering your questions about fixing.

And there are plenty of ways that everyone can celebrate at home too. These include:

• repair an item that you’ve had lying around for a while, if you need help you can find a local community repair event here;
• share your experience and post a photo/video of your repair on social media using the hashtag #RepairDay #RepairforEveryone. This could be a positive experience of repair, or a frustrating one, anything that tells the story of why you want more support for repair for everyone;
• encourage your family and friends to do the same;
• pass on your knowledge by helping someone else with a repair; 
• or support a local repair business.

[Photos courtesy of Mark A Phillips, and Mathew Lubari]

If you’ve been following any of our communications over the last 18 months (or those of our project partner Possible) you’ll know that we’ve been testing permanent repair in two Fixing Factories with support from the The National Lottery Community Fund. 

One of these, the Brent Fixing Factory has been based in a Reuse and Recycling centre. With support from West London Waste Authority, we refurbished and rehomed laptops which were destined to become e-waste. In the time it’s been open, we’ve worked with a fantastic volunteer team, offered work experience to local young people and donated a huge 206 laptops to people in need. And we ran  10 popular Dr.Laptop community repair sessions, fixing an additional 85 devices.

But as this first phase of the project draws to a close and we plan for future Fixing Factory scaling up, we have made the decision to  focus our efforts on more public facing, accessible initiatives. At both Fixing Factory sites, we quickly saw the scale of public appetite for getting support to fix their things and seeing repair happening. We’ve seen huge public, institutional and public interest in having fixing spaces on our highstreets. 

We know there’s still a need for initiatives to give laptops a second life, and the great news is there are loads of other fantastic organisations in London and beyond who you can still donate your devices to, find them on The Restart Project’s map of computer reuse projects. 

As the Brent Fixing Factory pilot at Abbey Road Reuse and Recycling centre is coming to an end, we have learnt so much from this site and are so proud of all we’ve achieved in such a short amount of time.  

A selection of our highlights…

Reducing e-waste 

We have saved 206 laptops from entering the e-waste stream by refurbishing them and repaired 85 devices at our community repair sessions. This equates to a whopping 585 kg in weight and up to 44,371kg prevented carbon emissions which is the same amount of emissions as driving around the world just over 9 times-  369,758 km to be exact! 

Supporting people and organisations

These devices have been donated to families, individuals and charities in Brent and neighbouring boroughs in order to address the digital divide.  By giving them access to a laptop,  we have empowered them to take courses online, apply for jobs, complete their school work and provide a way for them to stay in touch with loved ones. 

Like C who is socially isolated and has a fear of leaving her property. She didn’t finish high school and would like to continue her education and eventually start working. She doesn’t have the confidence to go into college yet so with this laptop she will be able to study from her own home and speak to her friends and family. Or S, a Ukrainian refugee who needed a laptop to join in with his school classes and keep in touch with classmates. 

Free community repair sessions 

We hosted 10 popular laptop focused community repair sessions in partnership with libraries across Brent, helping 155 participants with free repair support and advice to fix their devices!

‘My laptop was very slow and old, everybody told me to get a new one. I hate waste and can’t see why I should get rid of a lovely laptop. When I went to Dr laptop I was told that there was no need for a new laptop and it just needed a software clean. I was also shown how to use it more efficiently, it was a great experience!’ Carmela

Training young people 

We have been supported by an incredible 110 volunteers who contributed a huge 1270 hours of time – this equals 169 working days! We hosted  22 young people, referred to us by youth employment organisations and colleges, to complete their work experience with us as part of their employment journeys. 

Here’s what Akshay had to say about his work experience..

‘I decided to do my work experience with Fixing Factory because I needed to gain IT experience to apply for jobs.I found the Fixing Factory very helpful as I’ve learnt a lot and it has made me think about repairing laptops more instead of throwing them away.’

Developing a replicable method to lengthen the life of laptops 

We have developed a replicable method for extending the life of a laptop, which is currently being used at the Camden site.

Why can’t the Brent Fixing Factory stay open?

After reading about the impact we’ve had, you might be wondering why we’ve decided to close the Brent Fixing Factory… 

Working on site in a shipping container at a recycling centre, we’ve learnt so much, helped others learn, met wonderful people and not least, had an impact on e-waste and carbon emissions. 

It’s important work, but we quickly saw that people want to see repair happening in visible, publicly accessible spaces. By placing future Fixing Factories in high streets and other highly visible spaces, we could raise more awareness and do more to change how people think about repair. We offered laptop fixing sessions in the community that were hugely popular, but had limited engagement at the sessions hosted in the Fixing Factory itself because of its location.

Our training and work experience initiatives in Brent were always in demand, and we’ve seen that by helping people to keep their electricals going and teaching them how to repair, we can fix more things and keep items in circulation. This helped us realise we could have more impact by building on our experience of helping people to learn through taking part in fixing. Our future development of Fixing Factories will build on our experience at Brent helping people to learn to fix, we’ll just be in more visible spaces.

So, what’s next for us? 

West London Waste Authority & The Restart Project will continue to work together on projects such as the waste composition analysis which revealed out of 599 products that members of the public brought to be recycled 36.2% of them had the potential to be immediately reused, while an additional 57 (9.5%) required only minor repairs. 

We’ll also be using the shipping container space at Abbey Road Reuse and Recycling Centre to host our upcoming laptop repair course for young people.

The Camden Fixing Factory is still open. As this site matures we are exploring  new offers which focus on skills development through our innovative Repair Clubs and the creation of bite sized workshops focusing on the repair of a range of small household electronic items such as toasters and hoovers. You can stay in the loop with what’s going on by subscribing to our newsletter or visiting fixingfactory.org/news

Partnerships and thanks 

The Fixing Factories would not have been possible without funding from The National Lottery Community Fund.

Thank you to West London Waste Authority for hosting and partnering on the first ever fixing factory, and providing us with materials for this project. Brent Council libraries for hosting Dr.Laptop sessions. To all of the volunteers who have given their time and helped us to shape the project and to everyone else who has supported us on this journey.

What is Fixfest UK and why should you come?

Fixfest UK 2023 is the biggest gathering of community repair projects in the UK – a chance to connect, share, celebrate and strengthen our fantastic movement. We’re meeting in Cardiff on 30 September 2023.

Participants will share the ideas and energy from our community repair projects in a day that will rejuvenate and inspire us all. Through lively workshops, panel speakers and space to connect, we’ll explore big topics like making our repair groups more inclusive, working with young people, local collaboration and making repair the norm. We’ll hear from leaders in waste and community repair putting our valuable work in context while discussing how to connect with wider local ecosystems and normalise repair across the UK through policy.

Why now?

This gathering couldn’t be more timely. We’re giving people practical, accessible solutions from what to do with that broken kettle to how we can address the big challenges facing us. As we face rising concerns about the climate, waste and resources, as people feel the pinch of fast-rising costs for everyday essentials, and as communities rebuild and reconnect across difference and after the pandemic, community repair offers real impact.

There’s a huge appetite for repair with new repair cafes opening every month. Many councils – seeing the benefits of cutting waste and helping citizens – are keen to support community repair with venues, publicity, support and funding. Pop up repair events make it easy and affordable to get something fixed.

And our movement is innovating, working with new partners and developing in new directions. By running repair workshops and high street repair shops, working in schools, starting spin off projects like libraries of things, we’re providing new paths towards a more sharing, caring economy. Fixfest UK is where you’ll hear and explore the innovation and impact being made across the country.

What could be… 

And we also know there’s much more potential.

Community repair shows the way to a society where repair is normal, affordable and accessible to everyone. A recent study found 80% of the public would consider repair (PDF) ⁽¹⁾ – but we aren’t reaching all those people. Fixfest UK gives us the space to work out how we strengthen our movement, lever more support and attract funding to grow our impact.

Too many gadgets are still impossible to repair – that’s why we need a strong, legal Right to Repair, with manuals and parts readily available (including to repair volunteers) with repairability built in from the start. Repair can feel expensive compared to buying a cheap replacement (which may well need fixing in a year or two). But European countries like Austria, France, Germany and Sweden are experimenting with subsidies for repair – we need more in the UK.

At Fixfest UK, community repair groups will explore our vision for the future of repair, and how we can work together towards that vision.

If you’re reading this and are inspired to start a repair project, fantastic! Please note, this event won’t cover how to start a repair café, but you’ll find loads of useful resources here.

How to get involved

Fixfest UK 2023 is open to all community repair groups in the UK. It’s being organised by The Restart Project and Repair Cafe Wales in collaboration with other members of the Community Repair Network. It is funded by The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and is sponsored by SUEZ recycling and recovery UK.

We’re committed to making this event accessible and representative of the whole movement – there are a limited number of bursaries available to help towards travel costs, which you can apply for when booking a reduced price ticket.

We hope you’ll join us for this year’s Fixfest UK on 30 September in Cardiff – book your ticket here.

⁽¹⁾ Understanding the thoughts and feelings of consumers around Scotland on share and repair community projects (PDF), Circular Communities Scotland, 2023.

Feature image of participants at Fixfest UK 2018, credit: Mark A Phillips

This post was written by members of the Community Repair Network and originally appeared at: https://fixfest.org/news/strengthening-the-uk-repair-movement/

Every repair tells a story. The best ones are often fascinating histories of worn-out but treasured possessions. More common though are tales of products that have broken in frustrating ways. It’s this frustration—and the cathartic joy of getting things working again—that sparked the first Restart Party over ten years ago.

Ever since that first Restart Party, we’ve believed that combining these stories could tell us more about the world than any individual repair. So, from day one we started recording every repair we attempted.

Over the years we’ve built an online platform for everyone to store this data and analyse the impact of repairs. We’ve worked with allies to create an open standard for recording repairs and made data tools available to communities around the world. And our insights have helped shape new Right to Repair laws in Europe.

Our community has played a vital role at every stage, from recording repair data, to completing online microtasks to showing up at protests. So, we’re absolutely delighted to have been awarded the European Union Prize for Citizen Science—Digital Communities Award!

Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age speaks about The Restart Project (Can’t see the video above? Watch it directly on YouTube)

The European Union Prize for Citizen Science ‘honors, presents and supports outstanding projects whose social and political impact advances the further development of a pluralistic, inclusive and sustainable society in Europe.’ Learn more about the prize here.

We’re thrilled that the jury recognised the value of repair as a means of building communities and reducing our environmental impact at both a local level and at scale through policy interventions.

Here’s what they had to say:

“The Restart Project has been supporting the repair and reuse of technology for more than 10 years through forums, online coordination, and in-person events, with dedicated programs for digital inclusion and addressing under-represented groups. This growing and global community has gone on to not only revitalize old technology but also to provide data, and carry out research that give insights into the impact that reuse and repair has on the environment. This, in turn, plays an important role in changing policy regarding technology regulation. The jury commends the dedication to inclusion and community-making by the project, combined with the outreach to stakeholders in the policy sphere to create impact both in individuals’ lives and in international legislation.”

European Union Prize for Citizen Science Jury 2023

It’s a real honour and we’re looking forward to receiving the prize officially at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria this September.

But of course, none of this would have been possible without our community repair allies and—most importantly—our wonderful community themselves: the organisers and repairers who run repair events, members of restarters.net and our dedicated volunteers.

To all of you: thank you and congratulations!

You can read the full details here or watch the official announcement below:

(Can’t see the video above? Watch it directly on YouTube)

It’s often said that repair skills are more common among older generations. Unless these skills are passed down, so the argument goes, we’re in danger of losing them entirely. Whether true or not, teaching the next generation about repair has never been more important. As the climate crisis deepens, repair can play a vital role in reducing our environmental impact, building resilience and training young people for the jobs of the future.

Community repair events such as Restart Parties and Repair Cafés are brilliant learning opportunities. But we think it’s important that children and young people learn about repair in a variety of settings, from school to museums and beyond. So, here are some of our favourite educational materials for those aged 18 and under…

Make it work! – lesson plans for busy teachers

Our friends and partners in Belgium and the Netherlands have recently published two fantastic teaching packs. ‘Make it work!’ takes pupils on a journey through the world of consumer electronics and examines why repair is important. With two versions for different age groups, both packs contain general background information and specific lessons that help students and pupils develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

• Make it work! (for 14-18 year olds) →
• Make it work! (for 10-12 year olds) →

(Make it work! was developed as part of the EU-funded Sharepair project)

Fixing Things for the Future – start a student repair shop

Since 2016, the Munich Rudolf Steiner School Schwabing has been home to a student-run repair shop. Guided by a teacher and volunteer repair coaches, pupils aged 10 to 17 carry out repairs on broken items from members of the public. They tackle a huge range of repairs, from toasters to coffee machines and learn valuable skills in the process. Sounds good? The school has produced a handbook for those interested in trying something similar.

• Fixing Things for the Future – handbook (PDF, 20.7 MB)
• Learn more about the Student Repair Shop →
• Listen to our podcast where we interviewed the people involved →

Materials Matter – the stories behind our phones

Have you ever wondered what’s inside a smartphone? Our Materials Matter resources take you on the journey of making a phone, from the mine to the shop. Along the way, they examine how each step impacts people and planet. Available as a child-friendly online experience or as printed materials, learn more at the link below:

• Materials Matter (for all ages) →

Culture of Repair – for even more materials…

The resources above are great places to start. But if you’re looking for more, our friends at Culture of Repair have put together some exceptional lists of educational materials. It’s a must-use resource for anyone interested in working with children or young people around repair:

• Even more educational materials at Culture of Repair →

—

[Feature image of pupils disassembling a smartphone by Mark A Phillips, licensed under CC BY 4.0.]

How many times have you brought something to a recycling centre, and ended up spotting something else in a skip that looks reusable?

Since the early days of Restart, we’ve witnessed missed opportunities with reusable and repairable products. And this over time prompted us to do more – for example helping to coordinate donations of reusable laptops to groups refurbishing them during lockdown; or establishing a UK computer reuse directory to help people find options to give unwanted products a new lease of life.

Most recently our Brent Fixing Factory, based in a Abbey Road reuse and recycling centre is rescuing laptops. Here we refurbish as many as possible of the laptops brought to the centre for recycling, then donate them to people in need, whilst training young people in repair and refurbishing techniques.

But we wanted to look at the other small electrical products that were being brought for recycling. So with support from West London Waste Authority we designed a “waste composition analysis” which we ran for one week at the end of March, testing all electrical products brought for recycling to establish their reusability potential.

We were shocked at what we found. We tested 599 products that members of the public brought to be recycled, and found that 36.2% of them – or 217 – had the potential to be immediately reused, while an additional 57 (9.5%) required only minor repairs. That’s almost half of the electricals headed for recycling that could have had a second life in the hands of someone who needed them.

The wasted potential of this is significant: The products that were still working amount to more than 700 kg of waste generated in one week at just one site. Reusing these devices instead of recycling them would have the potential to save almost 6 tonnes of CO2e, if they displaced purchases of new products, according to our methodology.

And if all of these products were resold, they could have a potential resale value of up to £5,000, based on sales in Tech-Takeback’s Revaluit store for second hand electronics in Brighton

We estimate that if replicated across the UK it could mean that over 30,000 perfectly reusable small electrical and electronic products are “wasted” in recycling skips at household waste and recycling centres – every week.

This was just a research project, and as such we couldn’t reuse the tested products. The first-hand experience of the wasted potential is a clear reminder of the urgent change we need.

We hope this research will help make the case for more investment into projects to salvage reusable products and give them a second life. Findings also highlight the need for policy change across the UK, and we’ll make them known in consultations scheduled later this year. It is worth highlighting that once a product is inserted into a bay at a recycling centre, it is deemed as waste for recycling. Therefore it is crucial that products with reuse potential are filtered out before they get collected and processed by contractors that waste authorities work with.

What kind of products end up wasted? 

We found that all kinds of working products end up in recycling bins: from printers to kettles, irons to radios, vacuum cleaners to mobile phones.

These are products that families in need should be able to access at low, or no cost rather than feeding the mountain of e-waste that organisations like Restart are trying to tackle.

The fact that we are prematurely losing potentially reusable electricals to recycling is nothing new. According to a 2011 WRAP study, 23% of all electricals collected or brought to household waste and recycling centres were either fit for reuse, or required only minor repairs before they could be resold. This work keeps getting quoted 12 years on, so we decided to replicate the research on a smaller scale. Unfortunately, with 45% of products we tested being reusable with only minor repairs our results suggest that things have got worse since 2011. This remains a sort of “hidden secret”, and our study has shown that it continues to be untackled.

The push to recycle

The system is evidently broken. We are told that we’re not recycling enough, and it’s true: the UK missed its target for recycling of electrical and electronic waste in 2022, yet again. But while there are definitely lots of products that should be recycled, there are many that shouldn’t be anywhere near the recycling bin, they should be living a longer, or a second life in the hands and the homes of people that can use them.

Campaigns and messaging focus on reminding us to recycle. Where are the regulations and communications campaigns encouraging us to keep our electricals in use? They’re few and far between, and that’s because there’s no incentive for actors in the system to put the effort into diverting products for reuse.

What needs to change

In parts of the UK, waste authorities and waste management companies are testing out ways to separate reusable items from waste. We visited one notable example in Manchester, the Renew Hub run by Suez. Such examples show that there’s a huge amount of potential in saving products for reuse.

At the moment these are voluntary initiatives. We call for filtering and diverting products for reuse to become mandatory. Every local authority, every waste authority, every waste management company operating in the UK should be required to prevent unnecessary waste, and to contribute to reuse efforts.

Based on our experience through this waste composition analysis, and the conversations our technicians had with members of the public bringing products to the site in Brent, we think that while signposting residents to other options is essential, it will never be enough to reach optimal reuse rates. Initiatives to act as the final ‘net’, catching the huge number of products still worth reusing, are needed at all household waste and recycling centres in the UK.

Who could the reusable products go to?

Some of the products that today end up unnecessarily in recycling bins have obvious financial value: an almost new printer, a coffee machine or a blender, for example. Not to mention the fully reusable ice machine that someone brought to the recycling centre, after an agreed sale on eBay for £600 didn’t work out. These could be directly sold by owners online, or donated to charities like British Heart Foundation, or start-ups like Brighton’s Tech-Takeback for resale.

Other products might not have an immediate monetary value, but could still be reused. Vacuum cleaners, toasters and kettles could for example be invaluable for families moving into assisted accommodation, or on low incomes.

Products requiring repairs could be fixed and redistributed in Fixing Factories. or donated to community repair initiatives for repair, such as repair cafes or Restarters groups.

How did we test the products

Our team of Restart repairers visually inspected the plug, lead and unit of all small electrical items brought to the site, PAT tested them for safety, then assessed their functionality. The Restarters then placed the products in one of six categories: Fully reusable; only external damage; economical repair, costly repair, end of life or unknown.

It is worth noting we were not able to test the functionality of a further 34% of items due to lack of power cables or linked products, so more comprehensive testing would be likely to identify an even higher proportion of products that could be reused by others with or without simple repair. And our research didn’t factor in 32 laptops that were brought that week to the same centre, as laptops are diverted for reuse systematically thanks to the work of our Fixing Factory.

A small study with big findings 

This was a small study which could have big implications. If reusable products are being recycled at the same scale across the country, the level of waste is a scandal. In a climate emergency and a cost of living crisis we simply cannot afford to waste working products at this scale.

Sewing machines are a common sight at Restart Parties, Repair Cafés and other repair events. But while they’re most often used to fix clothes, we’ve also seen hundreds of broken machines that need repairing themselves.

When a sewing machine goes wrong, it’s not always obvious how to get it working again. So we were delighted to welcome back the wonderful Jennie Caminada from Cheekyhandmades to lead this online skillshare session about what to look out for when troubleshooting a broken or malfunctioning sewing machine.

From needle problems and thread quality speed control to adjusting bobbin tension and oiling, we covered the most common problems you’re likely to come across and shared tips for keeping your sewing machine running smoothly.

Catch up on it all with the recording below:

(Can’t see the video above? Watch it directly on YouTube here)

And if you prefer written information, see what our community repair wiki has to say about sewing machines.

Right to Repair continued to be a key focus for our advocacy work in 2022. Most of our contributions happened via the European Right to Repair Campaign – which we co-steer alongside other non-profits and companies pushing for ambitious regulations. Restart’s strategy sees legislation on repair as the most effective way to bring change to all manufacturers. And we argue that the European Union is currently still the area with highest potential to impact legislation globally.

Progress in Europe, although slow

There’s been plenty happening in the last year. From our perspective, the most encouraging achievement was the agreement on a Battery Directive, which will require manufacturers of most   consumer products to come up with designs allowing users to replace their battery themselves, and to move away from disposable, “single-battery” devices. We’re also happy that ecodesign measures for smartphones and tablets were finalised. While far from perfect, they will for the first time require manufacturers to make a range of spare parts available for at least 7 years to  consumers, and a larger range to independent repairers; manufacturers will also have to commit to making available software and security updates for at least 5 years once a product is removed from the market. This could be game-changing, as plenty of devices become unsupported far too soon.

Unfortunately, it will be years before these laws come into effect, despite the urgent need of limiting the amount of e-waste we generate. Equally worryingly, we witnessed plenty of delays in new legislation announced by the European Union: a sign that manufacturers and others are pushing back on Right to Repair, and that European institutions may lack sufficient capacity to deliver on their theoretically bold commitments.

Looking ahead, we expect (slow) progress in 2023 on European legislation on the need for spare parts for a broader range of products, as well as on repair options within legal guarantee periods and on the repairability of printers. How much progress? It’s hard to estimate for now.

Elsewhere: lots happening in the US

The year ended in a bittersweet way in the United States, with the first Right to Repair legislation signed in New York state – an important step, however weakened substantially by industry lobbying until the very last minute. This means that for example spare parts and repair information availability will not be required for products provided in business-to-business and business-to-government contracts, which include electronics provided to schools or hospital. Also, the legislation will allow bundling of spare parts: selling multiple parts combined (more expensive) – something that we’ve successfully opposed in the most recent European regulations on smartphones and tablets.

Another emerging trend – especially in the United States – is the attempt by manufacturers to come up with their own version of “Right to Repair”, to try reduce likelihood of more ambitious legislation. This is our interpretation of the recent announcement of the removal of digital locks for farmers’s tractors by John Deere, included in a non-legally binding “Memorandum of understanding” with the American Farm Bureau Federation, which in return was asked (!) not to campaign for more ambitious regulations.

Beyond the United States, we see interest growing on legislation to bring Right to Repair in Australia, India and elsewhere, but we need more!

What about the UK?

Right to Repair is still not a priority for the UK government, regrettably. We expect that some of the new EU policies will eventually either be adopted by the UK, or that they will at least inspire similar initiatives. However we don’t see signs of this happening any time soon. It’s a shame, as there’s plenty of areas in which they UK could act in a faster and more compelling way compared to other countries: for example removing VAT from the cost of all repairs, one of the key asks of our petition.

There’s plenty of inspiration that the UK could take from other countries – starting with the repairability index in France, which could help consumers make better informed decisions when buying a new product, to the Austrian repair fund, which helps substantially reduce the price of repairs by providing families vouchers with 50% discounts for values up to 200eu per year.

What’s next for the Right to Repair movement?

Despite relative progress on legislation, we are very concerned about the affordability of repair, as well as the growing threat that software poses to product repairability and longevity. None of the legislation in the pipeline in the UK, US or EU directly tackles the cost of repair: requiring manufacturers to make spare parts available doesn’t mean that the parts will be affordable. Also, legislation on new products doesn’t increase the repairability of existing products – hence, our ask that legislators consider fiscal measures to make repair more affordable and universally accessible. In parallel, some manufacturers are using software to restrict the kind of spare parts that can be used to complete a repair: another way of increasing the cost of repairs. Lack of commitment for long-term software support for many products  also contributes to the unnecessary premature obsolescence of way too many products.

In 2023 we’ll continue to put pressure on policymakers using evidence and insights from the thousands of community repair events held around the UK and Europe. We’ll have new campaigns, both as Restart and the European Right to Repair Campaign, to remind everyone that we’re still far from making repair the norm. And we’ll amplify the voices of community repair groups, whose activities prove again and again that repair is possible and in much demand everywhere.

As 2022 comes to a close and the holiday season is fast approaching, we want to celebrate the past year in a festive way. 

On the 12th day of Christmas, Restart gave to me 12 new London groups!

Community repair has been blossoming this year, in London and all over the UK. In the capital, 12 new community groups have joined Restarters and we cannot wait to see what they get up to in the new year. 

On the 11th day of Christmas, Restart gave to me 11 Mer-IT trainees!

In June, 11 young people were trained by Mer-IT on how to build, repair, and upgrade a PC. The course was funded by and run as part of the Fixing Factories initiative and led to a number of trainees continuing to a work experience placement. You’ll hear a bit more about Fixing Factories later on in this list…

On the 10th day of Christmas, Restart gave to me our 10 year birthday!

We were happy to be able to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the first Restart Party with so many members of our London community this June. It’s been a busy decade of growth, learning, and pushing for change, and we’re so excited to see what comes next.

On the 9th day of Christmas, Restart gave to me 9 conference speeches!

We were honoured to be asked to share our work and spread the message of Right to Repair at so many conferences this year including: Electrical Product Safety Conference, AMDEA’s 2050 – Appliances of the Future: The Road to Net Zero, East Midlands Fixfest, Royal Society of Chemistry, C40 Cities, Low Carbon Design Institute, Zero Waste Symposium 2022, and of course Fixfest 2022. Thanks for having us!

On the 8th day of Christmas, Restart gave to me 8 Brent work placements!

We were super happy that through Brent Fixing Factory we could facilitate some training and education for eight future repairers. We are always looking for ways to work more with repair businesses and this includes encouraging and supporting the next generation of professional repairers. 

On the 7th day of Christmas, Restart gave to me 7,764 event attendees!

Let’s take a look at the data. This year, over 30,000 hours of volunteering were logged on Restarters by community groups, with 8,400 items repaired, and 23 tonnes of waste and 246 tonnes of CO2 emissions avoided. This is a massive achievement and a sight for sore eyes after a difficult couple of years for in-person repair. 

On the 6th day of Christmas, Restart gave to me the 6th annual Repair Day!

This year we celebrated the sixth International Repair Day with the theme ‘Repair Everywhere’. Repairers from all over the world sent in footage of them repairing in the most unusual  places they could find in an effort to prove that anyone can repair no matter where they are or the skills they have (see #1!). 

On the 5th day of Christmas, Restart gave to me 50 Fixfest sessions!

This year’s Fixfest spanned 50 sessions both in-person and online. Nearly 150 people attended the event in Brussels to share their knowledge and make new connections. 

Hear from the attendees themselves on Restart Podcast Ep. 80: Voices of Fixfest 2022.

On the 4th day of Christmas, Restart gave to me our top 4 podcast episodes!

Our 4 most listened to podcast episodes were: 

• Restart Podcast Ep. 78: Meet our new(ish) Co-Director, Fiona Dear
• Restart Podcast Ep. 73: Repair Café Aotearoa New Zealand

• Restart Podcast Ep. 72: Maintaining your bike and your community, with Jenni Gwiazdowski
• Restart Podcast Ep. 75: The law and repair: it’s complicated, with Aaron Perzanowski

And did you know that our listener numbers put us in the top 5% of podcasts?!

On the 3rd day of Christmas, Restart gave to me 317 repair businesses!

We made great progress this year on London Repairs – our London based repair directory. We mapped eight new boroughs in West London, with funding from West London Waste Authority and added 147 businesses through this work, bringing our total to 317. 

On the 2nd day of Christmas, Restart gave to me 2 Fixing Factories!

Perhaps our most exciting achievement of the year was opening two brand new Fixing Factories in Brent and Camden. It’s a project that we have seen transform from a glimmer of an idea to two physical spaces, and we are so excited to keep developing the project with all of you.

On the 1st day of Christmas, Restart gave to me a fixer in a big tree!

This year for Repair Day, our worldwide fixing community came together to show that repair is everywhere. We had an amazing turnout including from our friends over in Aotearoa, a whole 11,000 miles away who filmed this video of repair happening on a beautiful old tree branch.  

What about 2023?

We’re so excited about what’s in store in 2023. Our big plans include Fixfest UK,  more progress on Fixing Factories and a new campaign to keep electronics going for longer.

Thanks for being here in our 10th year and here’s to the next! If you are able to support our work, please consider giving what you can. 

Donate here

[Images by Mark A Phillips, licensed under CC BY 2.0.]

Our not-so-new Co-Director, Fiona Dear, reflects on an Autumn of bringing the repair movement together. 

This Autumn was busy. By September I’d spent 9 months getting my head round the world of electronic repair – and all the issues that link with it. Tech and software. Reuse and digital access. Community repair and data. E-waste, minerals and the waste sector. And our fight for the right to repair. So it was brilliant to have a couple of opportunities to bring this to life this Autumn. 

The wonderful world of Fixfest

First up we had Fixfest at the end of October: 3 days of eye opening discussion and, of course, fixing. The event brought together repairers and tinkers from around the world. Bringing the repair movement together gave us a chance to learn from each other, be inspired and chew over the challenges that we’re all trying to fix. 

A recurring question was: How can we make repair more mainstream? We all love it, but we know it’s not for everyone. We know the barriers include cost – of spare parts and labour, a lack of confidence in fixing – especially with electronics, knowing where to find repair services. And all of that within a system that makes repair too difficult and has generated an autopilot of buying new when things break.

A world of solutions

Whilst pondering this challenge, Fixfest also offered solutions: We heard about how repair vouchers, which cover 50% of repair costs up to €200, are encouraging more people to repair in Austria. We were surrounded by the wonderful people behind community repair. The wonderful people who offer low-or-no cost repair, and get people involved in fixing their own things everywhere from Denmark to a Ugandan refugee camp. This ecosystem of repair cafes and restart parties has sprung up to make repair more accessible, lower cost and build people’s confidence in fixing things themselves. We talked business models with those that are taking community repair to the high street. And we compared notes on repair directories in Buenos Aires and Vienna with our map in London, designed to make finding a repair service easier.  

And what of the root issue of how things are made? We took the fight for the Right to Repair to EU politicians on the first day of Fixfest. We then heard about policies like the French repair index, which clearly communicates, at point of sale, how repairable products are. This is shifting the choices people are making, and manufacturers are taking note. And we got our teeth into some campaign planning.  

Taking repair to the world

And we finished, as we should, with a repair cafe. We were blown away by Repair Together’s magical mobile repair cafe. Starting with what looks like a regular trailer, the sides fold up to form a canopy. Further panels fold down and pull out to form work surfaces – with trenches near the edge to stop screws rolling off the worktops. An ingenious coffee station at the back fuels the conversations that bring community repair to life.

There was a healthy mix of big questions posed and thoughtful solutions offered. It’s safe to say that I wasn’t the only one that left with my head buzzing. 

Repair everywhere on one day (ish)

Having brought together the people that make community repair happen at Fixfest, we went straight into Repair Day, two weeks later. For Repair Day, we brought the global repair community to life by celebrating fixing on and around 15th October. New Zealanders repaired in trees and Germans repaired by the Brandenburg Gate. Repair cafes got fixing across the world at the same time. New groups engaged their politicians. We saw repairathons, and heard repair stories. Together we showed that repair really is everywhere. 

And we celebrated the people who make the repair movement happen. Inspired by Repair&Share’s video of the team singing “We Will Fix It” (think “We Will Rock You”), we got the Fixfest delegates involved for our own rendition of ‘We Will Fix It’. It was a brilliant way to end three days of inspiration, and show off the repair community to the world. 

Back to the real world

And now? After bringing the repair movement together for an Autumn of inspiration, we’ve come back down to earth and had a chance to reflect and recover. Now we’re busy turning our conversations into exciting plans for next year. The challenge is huge, but with the size, scale and creativity of the repair movement that has sprung up, to meet it, we WILL fix it. 

Find out more, and see videos, notes and photos from Fixfest here. 

It’s almost time for Fixfest 2022! This year, we will be convening in Brussels for the first time in too long as a global community. We’re so happy that many of you are able to join us from all over the world, representing the diverse range of repair work that is happening all the time. 

Fixfest is a global gathering of the repair community – bringing together people interested in volunteering in community repair, barriers to repair, repair policy, business models for repair. We came up with the concept in London in 2017, and Runder Tisch Reparatur ran the second international edition in 2019.

This year’s Fixfest is our most ambitious yet. We’re meeting in Brussels, which over the years has become a symbol for European efforts on Right to Repair. And we’re organising the event in partnership with the European Right to Repair Campaign – a coalition of over 100 organisations from throughout Europe which we launched at the previous Fixfest in 2019 – and with Repair Together and Repair & Share, the two Belgian-based organisations supporting community repair across the country. Fixfest 2022 is part of our contribution to the Sharepair project, with support from the EU Interreg North-West Europe programme. We are grateful to our sponsors for the event: Back Market and iFixit to help make this possible

As well as our absolutely stacked in-person programme, we will also be holding Fixfest online, featuring different content by and for those of you who are not able to join in person. We also plan to publish documentation and recordings of select sessions held in Brussels in coming weeks.

Find out more here!

The Fixfest 2022 programme

The programme for Fixfest 2022 will focus on four core themes: Repair in our communities, the Right to Repair, Repair and education and How to repair. 

Friday 30th September is a day focused on Right to Repair and how EU policies can be instrumental in overcoming remaining barriers to repair. We’ll feature perspectives from a range of partners involved in the push for repair legislation, as well as contributions from European institutions. There’s a few remaining tickets available for the conference in case you’re in Brussels, and you can also watch a livestream of this session – see the full programme and register here. 

Then, if you’re in the mood for some on the ground activism, we’ll be holding a Right to Repair protest at 16.00/4pm in Place René Cliquet, a busy commercial street in Brussels. Come get involved, make a sign, and make your voice heard!

We’ll kick off Fixfest proper on 1st October with an exciting keynote by Mathew Alapayo. Alapayo is the founder of CC4D, a nonprofit based in Rhino Camp Refugee Settlement in Uganda that promotes sustainability through repair and reuse. 

Throughout the weekend, we’ll have a selection of talks, workshops, and interactive sessions that cover a massive range of topics. 

On Saturday, the sessions will explore community repair around the world featuring everything from talks on 3D printing of spare parts, Bringing Community Repair to the High Streets and more. For participants more interested in the practicalities of repair, there will be plenty of sessions, from how to troubleshoot, to how to repair a sewing machine

And in the evening, we’ll drop the technical talk for a party where members of our global community can meet, socialise, and get to know each other. 

On Sunday 2nd October, there’s some internationally focused programming, including sessions on Long-term aims for the global repair community as well as one on the power of the repair data we collect. We will also be looking at what happens after Fixfest with a session on Repair Day 2022 and  have a plenary about Looking back on Fixfest and ahead to the future of repair. 

In the afternoon, we’ll be doing something a little special. We’re taking advantage of this gathering of repair volunteers and passionate fixers by hosting a large-scale repair cafe open to the public at Ateliers des Tanneurs, while also giving people a chance to learn what’s inside a smartphone, alongside other activities. 

View the programme here

How to be part of the programme

The sessions for this conference have been suggested by members of our community all over the world, and the majority are hosted by those in your own repair communities. Across the weekend, there will be open ‘unconference’ slots available for anyone who would like to run their own short session. 

We look forward to seeing you there or online later this week!

Repair will be Everywhere on October 15th

This year for the sixth annual Repair Day, we want to show the world that you can find Repair Everywhere. In the world we live today, repair is often not at the forefront of people’s minds. Instead, we are encouraged to just replace our things when they break. Not only can this be an expensive solution at a time when many people do not have money to spare, this way of thinking is also incredibly harmful to the planet.

We want to make repair so visible that it will become everyone’s first port of call when something breaks. We’re asking novices to try out new fixing or maintenance techniques, fixers will showcase their favourite repairs, and we’ll celebrate the brilliant community repair groups and businesses that are at the heart of our movement. And we want everyone to share their fixes on social media so that as we approach 15th October, repair really will be everywhere.

Get involved! Try a bit of maintenance or fixing, and share what you did. Don’t forget to use the tags #RepairEverywhere and #RepairDay so we can share your stories.

What simple repairs could you try?

Clean

Our friends at eSpares say that you should clean your toaster every 1-2 weeks. Is yours due some TLC?

Step 1: Unplug your toaster, remove the racks and the crumb tray to empty and clean.

Step 2: Wipe the inside with a damp cloth and washing up liquid.

Step 3: Scrub away burnt-on food with an old toothbrush.

Step 4: Wipe the outside with a soapy cloth. If its chrome – crumple a ball of aluminium foil and rub off any rust spots.

If your laptop isn’t brand new, the fan probably needs a clean. A dusty laptop fan can make your device overheat, and affect performance. 

All laptops are different and some are a lot more difficult to open than others – especially when there’s glue involved. Our friends at iFixit can help you work out how to open your specific machine and make sure the motherboard is safe to clean. Once you’ve opened it, cleaning is quite straightforward. Just make sure you’ve got a used toothbrush and some compressed air handy!

Revive

Pump up your bike tyres… or if it’s really old, change your bike tyre all together.

Our friend Jenni Gwiazdowski from London Bike Kitchen made this amazing video tutorial on how to change your bike tyre carefully and efficiently.

Step 1: Slightly pump up the tube before you put it in your new tyre. If it’s too big then just deflate a bit

Step 2: You’ll only ever be able to put one side of the tyre on first, then the other.

Step 3: Do not use tyre levers to put your tyre on, you are very likely to cause a pinch flat explosion if you do this

Step 4: Finally, make sure the tube is not going to sneak out the side or push up the tyre at the valve.

Descale your kettle.

Many of us do not descale our kettles often enough. And if limescale builds up it can make our appliance less efficient and eventually unusable. ESpares share how to use a descaler to quickly give your kettle a refresh.

Step 1: Fill the appliance with water up to the limescale marks.

Step 2: Add approximately 100ml descaler (1/5 of the bottle content) per 1/2 litre of water.

Step 3: Heat up the solution to approximately 50°C and let it stand for about 30 minutes.

Step 4: Finally, rinse thoroughly with water

Fix

Do you have a faulty cable or headphone wire? Our friends at Sugru (maker of a mouldable glue) may be able to help you fix it with their tutorial.

Step 1: Add a light coat of soapy water onto your cable mould using a paintbrush. Shake off the excess.

Step 2: Use half a single-use pack of Sugru and roll it into a long sausage, roughly the length of the mould. Press the Sugru flat and then wrap the Sugru around the cable and press it into a rough shape making sure that there is more near the connector end of the cable.

Step 3: Place the cable between the two mould pieces.

Step 4: Press the two parts of the mould together and rock from side to side. This gives the Sugru into the mould shape and pushes the excess Sugru out. In professional compression moulding this is called flash.

Step 5: Lift one side of the mould off and trim off the excess Sugru.

Step 6: Apply more soapy water to the mould and repeat the moulding and trimming process.

Step 7: Leave the Sugru to set and after 12-24 hours it will turn into strong and flexible rubber!

Mend those jeans.

If you’ve got an old pair of ripped jeans buried at the bottom of your cupboard, this is the perfect time to mend them! You can do this as creatively or practically as you like. Fashion Revolution has a great guide for different ways to make your jeans better than new.

Step 1: Measure out how big you need to make your patch. As a rule of thumb, always ensure your patch covers 2cm past where the tears/hole ends.

Step 2: Take the measurements from step 1, add 1cm seam allowance around the edges and then cut your patch. On the back/reverse side of your fabric, take your measuring tape and chalk/pin 2cm in from the edge all around the patch.

Take your patch to the ironing board, fold up the seam edge to meet your chalk lines/pins and press down. Repeat this for all 4 sides of the patch.

Step 3: Pin your patch to your jeans. Place your pins in the 4 corners of the patch.

Step 4: Sew in your patch, being careful to remove the pins as you sew.

How are you going to celebrate?

There are already loads of events registered on our global map of confirmed activities on and around Saturday 15 October.

To find out what the Restarter community are getting up to in the UK, check out our upcoming parties!

You can submit your own event, initiative or endorsement with this form and we’ll add it to the map so that people in your local community can join in.

And there are plenty of ways that everyone can celebrate at home too. These include:

• repair an item that you’ve had lying around for a while – try the tips above;
• If you want to get creative, try repairing in an unexpected place, and bring Repair Everywhere to life;
• share your experience and post a photo/video of your repair on social media using the hashtag #RepairDay #RepairEverywhere;
• encourage your family and friends to do the same;
• pass on your knowledge by helping someone else with a repair;
• or support a local repair business.

However you are celebrating the day, we’d love to hear about it. We’ve updated a social media toolkit for Repair Day, which you can view here. You can also sign up to our newsletter for updates.

[“Toaster cleaning” courtesy of Mark A Phillips is licensed under CC BY 4.0.; “Flat tyre on a city bicycle” by Ivan Radic is licensed under CC BY 2.0.; “Using Sugru to mend a cable” photo courtesy of Sugru; “sashiko stitch and patch” by Flickr user woolgenie is licensed under CC BY 2.0]

We can’t believe it either but today marks the 10 year anniversary of the first Restart Party! We’ve been doing plenty of reflecting recently on what we are proud of, what we want to change, and where to go next. We’ve proven, especially in recent years, that – along with our community – we know how to adapt to new challenges.

So much has happened over the last decade, and we’ve put together a video that celebrates some of our biggest moments so far. From our first party at a North London pub, to events at Somerset House and in Parliament and features on BBC news, we’ve been spreading the repair message far and wide.

What’s coming up in our next decade?

And it absolutely does not stop there. This year we launched Fixing Factories – one of the most exciting projects we’ve ever worked on. We hope that it will open up a new way to get the public interested in repair, and connect us with professional repairers and others the repair community in London (and maybe one day nationwide). We truly cannot wait to see where the next decade takes Restart and how our community continues to thrive, innovate, and push for change.

It’s been a while since we updated you on the work that we’ve been doing on the Repair Directory. But if you’ve been paying attention to the map, you couldn’t have helped but notice that there’s been a repair business explosion.  

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been expanding the directory to cover 8 new boroughs. This work was funded by West London Waste Authority (WLWA), by Hammersmith & Fulham Council, and by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It was match-funded by our participation in the Sharepair project. Thanks to this project, we’ve been able to log  and learn about many brilliant repair businesses in Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Kensington & Chelsea and Richmond Upon Thames. 

During this project, we’ve managed to add 147 businesses across these boroughs. We’re excited that residents across almost all of London should now be able to find a place to get their stuff fixed. Here’s a before and after of the directory’s makeover, looks great doesn’t it?

Why we do this

The directory now features over 300 businesses that repair everything from smartphones to lawnmowers to electric guitars. It’s been lovely becoming more acquainted with the professional repair community in London, and meeting more businesses through our research. The aims of the Repair Directory are two-fold. Firstly, we want to champion the brilliant repair businesses in London. And secondly, we want people to have a reliable repair business at their fingertips when something breaks. We’re proud to support so many wonderful independent businesses and our campaign for the Right to Repair will ensure that repair work is not only possible but thriving.⁠ 

What’s next

We plan to expand the directory further, and hope that more waste authorities and local councils will support us in these efforts. We’re currently working on creating a dedicated microsite to house the directory and make searches even easier. Here we hope to host other content like, repair business profiles. We’re delighted to have been approached by organisations outside of London who are interested in starting repair directories of their own! 

As always, we are accepting submissions from businesses themselves or members of the public who want to recognise their favourite local repair shops. If you know a business that you think deserves to be included in the directory, submit it on this page. 

We would also love to start working more closely with repair businesses on other projects. One aspect of this is campaigning. Through our research, we found that many businesses are aware of or promote the environmental benefits of repairing. One of the main ways that you can support the Right to Repair is by signing our petition so that we can show the UK government just how popular the movement is. If you are a business owner who would like to learn more, please get in contact!

We also have exciting opportunities accompanying our Fixing Factory project. This summer, in partnership with Mer-IT, we will be running training courses for budding repairers. If your business would be interested in hosting young apprentices who have completed this training, please let us know! You can visit this page to register your interest. 

After months of fundraising, recruiting and planning, we’re delighted to have launched our first Fixing Factory in the Abbey Road Reuse and Recycling Centre, Brent, on Saturday 23rd April. This will be the first of two Factories that we’ll be launching this year, in a pilot project funded by the National Lottery Community Fund. Find out more about the Fixing Factories.

What’s happening? 

The Brent Fixing Factory will be hosted by the West London Waste Authority. It will be led by project partner Ready Tech Go, who will focus on repairing donated laptops and tablets and passing them on to people without digital access.

Visitors to the site will be able to donate devices, see how they’re repaired and find out about the project. Those keen to learn about repair will have a chance to volunteer on the site and get work experience. 

We’ll also host regular weekend events with local partners, where visitors will be able to get involved in a more hands-on way. Ideas so far include workshops on laptop repair, and an opportunity to bring your own laptop for fixing. 

In a couple of months, the second Fixing Factory, on a Camden high street will open, run by Possible. This one will offer repair of a wider range of small electronics, as well as workshops, a community space and possibly even a retro gaming arcade. 

If you have ideas for either site, or would like to collaborate on an event please comment in the box below. 

What are we aiming to achieve? 

With the Fixing Factories, we want to do a few things. 

An obvious goal is to make electronics last longer, to prevent unnecessary e-waste and the huge amount of carbon emissions involved in the production and transport of new devices. 

The pandemic helped make clear the importance of digital inclusion: for school children as well as plenty of others. But the problems are far from solved, as asylum seekers, job seekers and many others still lack access. The rescued and refurbished laptops will help these people gain life-changing digital access. 

We also want to get more people thinking about repair and reuse of electronics. As well as boosting awareness that laptop repair or donation is an option, we’re also keen to engage young people, who could benefit from learning the skills involved in laptop repair. We’re working with local partners to find out what young people want, we’re offering a training course with partners Mer-It, and people will be able to learn through volunteering. 

And we want to create a blueprint for Fixing Factories around the country. Fixing Factories in waste facilities will work very differently to factories run on a highstreet. Our pilot project will work out the best ways to run reuse and repair centres in both locations. We hope to be able to scale up our learnings, leading to fixing factories popping up across the UK (and hopefully beyond!) in years to come.  

Get involved and find out more

Find out more about both Fixing Factories, and find out how to visit the Brent site at www.fixingfactory.org. You can you can sign up for email updates in the form below. 

If you’d like to volunteer, please get in touch here, and select the Volunteering – Fixing Factory option.

And we’d love to know what you think. Let us know your ideas in the comments below:

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m a Londoner and engineer who works on making data centres more sustainable and reliable.

When did you start repairing electronics and electricals?

I grew up in a house where fixing was always happening and have been involved with Restart since 2014.

Why do you attend Restart Parties (or Repair Cafes)?

It’s great to take action to reduce waste and learn how things work / break and are fixed and share this with others.

What is your favourite kind of repair?

One where the item owner and restarter have learned something new which they can use again in future and have been able to achieve a successful repair through teamwork.

What do you do when you are not Restarting?

Picking fruit in Kensal to Kilburn, reading, singing, smashing the patriarchy.

What frustrates you (in life)?

Seeing the same mistakes getting repeated and selfishness.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

A very long to-do list.

What’s the first thing – one material thing – that you could not live without? (besides oxygen, food, water, and shelter and medical care)

A kettle.

Share something cool with us [can be a link]

We’re really excited to announce a new project, made possible thanks to National Lottery funding, in partnership with climate charity Possible, Ready Tech Go, West London Waste Authority, and Mer IT.

Together in London, we’re designing and testing two visions of permanent places for community-powered repair: ‘Fixing Factories’. Thanks to more than £190,000 in funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK, the project will work with volunteers and repair businesses on a Camden high street and inside a Brent waste facility.

We’ll turn the Fordist factory on its head and forge new spaces for fixing, learning, curiosity and empowerment. Opportunities for 16-30 year olds, including skills development, training, and paid work – will be central. Our fresh approach, novel locations and community powered design can create new forms of climate action that meet local needs and involve new communities.

We at Restart will be celebrating our tenth year of activity in Camden. We have experience working with communities in different parts of the borough, and we’re keen to target this project at those who can benefit most. We’re new to Brent, but we’ve partnered with West London stars Ready Tech Go and West London Waste Authority, who can help us meet local needs.

Camden’s Fixing Factory

Possible will lead in Camden, securing a storefront space to operate a Fixing Factory focusing on small household appliances and electronics. Devices such as toasters, hand-held electronics, kettles and hoovers are difficult to get fixed – a significant market failure that helps lock low-income households into an expensive cycle of replacement of lower-cost, lower-quality items.

Operating standard opening hours, the Factory will allow residents to:

• Get their broken products fixed on a ‘donate as you feel’ model
• Join repair workshops/1-2-1 learning sessions (including online)
• Learn how waste, fixing and reuse affect the climate crisis and discuss systemic solutions
• Discover funded training opportunities via our partner Mer-IT
• Access community space for networking, volunteering and socialising

The Factory will host local professional repairers working ‘front of house’, bringing the intrigue of fixing into public view. To broaden the Factory’s appeal, attract new people and diversify revenue we will explore offering low-cost community space hire after hours, hosting a community cafe on local concession, opening a retro gaming arcade.

Brent’s Fixing Factory

In partnership with West London Waste Authority (WLWA) and local grassroots group Ready Tech Go (RTG), we’ll create a laptop Fixing Factory inside Abbey Road recycling centre. Local volunteer and professional repairers will repurpose computers for local school children out of adapted shipping containers, putting fixing on show and engaging residents dropping waste. Young people will be invited to learn and volunteer onsite, with training and work experience pathways available again through Mer-IT.

We don’t believe live repair at a mass discard site has been done before – and want to test how effective this contrast is in reducing e-waste and changing behaviour. Besides daily repair, we’ll host public events demonstrating how laptops can have valuable second lives and facilitating deeper learning about solutions to the impacts of e-waste.

We’re hiring

To make this a reality, we’re hiring for a total of three roles – one full-time role with Possible (fixed term contract) focusing on Camden, one full-time role with Restart (fixed term contract) helping in both sites and closing soon, and one full-time role with Ready Tech Go (fixed term contract).

Get involved by leaving a comment below

Do you have some ideas that can help us design these Factories? Our approach has been grounded in the needs of communities where we’ll be operating, since we even conceived of this project, and will continue to be. Please let us know in the comments or get in touch directly.

If you’d like to follow our progress and hear about opportunities to get involved, you can sign up for email updates below:

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m owner of an independent repair shop, and I’m concerned with e-waste and the planned obsolescence of tech.

When did you start repairing electronics and electricals?

It is difficult to answer this because I started attempting to repair at a very young age, I was a curious kid who wanted to know how things like remote control cars, torches and or any battery-operated toys operated. Whenever they stopped working, I was always opening them with a screwdriver to check what’s wrong.

But professionally I started to repair in 2014.

Why do you attend Restart Parties (or Repair Cafes)?

There are few reasons I attend Restart Parties.

• I get the opportunity to fix devices which would’ve eventually ended up in a landfill, which has an immense negative impact on our environment. I enjoy giving those devices a second chance.
• I have the chance to work with other Restarters who share the same vision as me (reducing e-waste). All Restarters have a passion for repairs and genuinely enjoy what they are doing, like myself.
• It gives me great satisfaction to see the happiness from Restart Parties attendees, when their device has been repaired.

What is your favourite kind of repair?

Mobile phones are my favourite devices to repair.

What do you do when you are not Restarting?

I run my own independent repair shop with my brother for the past 8 years. We are based in Central London, our store name is Saras Fix.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

My wife.

What’s the first thing – one material thing – that you could not live without? (besides oxygen, food, water, and shelter and medical care)

My motorbike, I love riding.

Share something cool with us

Here’s how to call for a repair if your screen is broken.

As 2021 draws to a close, it’s time to celebrate what we’ve accomplished together this year. Again with the challenge of not being able to meet in public for much of the year. Here are some highlights:

1. Community repair gained new purpose

As the pandemic forced more of our daily lives online, it brought the digital divide into sharp focus. People without access to devices were left even further behind.

So in January, we launched our ‘laptops for lockdown’ campaign. Thanks to your support, we helped local projects collect, repair and distribute laptops to school children.

In the process we realised how important repair is for digital access. Also, crucially and for the first time, the public made the connection between issues of social inequality and waste. We’ve been working with Digital Access West Yorkshire and Nominet to learn more about this work across the UK, and we’ll present the results of our research in the new year, and continue to support this work. So watch this space.

2. Our movement got louder in 2021

Repair really is becoming mainstream, with numerous television shows promoting repair. The Right to Repair grew in profile all over the world, from the US to Australia and New Zealand, and gaining a profile in India, and garnering media attention in Hong Kong and China.

In spite of the pandemic, International Repair Day saw hundreds of events around the world.

We were invited on television every time repair made headlines (which was a lot this year!)

We’re also proud to be teaming up with other community projects across the UK as part of the new Community Repair Network. We’re keen to see this network provide regional support to new groups getting started, and help super-charge community repair in the UK into the future.

3. We learned lots from our repair data

Throughout the year we invited you to embrace your inner scientist and help us explore our rich repair data. And wow did we learn a lot!

First we revealed the true environmental impact of our electronics and updated our community platform to let everyone estimate the environmental benefits of repair events. This work taught us how scarce good information is about the environmental impact of electronics. And how much more needs to be done for carbon literacy on our consumption.

Diving into nearly 50,000 repair attempt records, with your help, we identified many of the reasons our electronics break in the first place. We focused on printers, tablets and batteries, and already started using our findings to push back against industry lobbyists!

4. The Right to Repair started to become a reality

This year has seen unprecedented pressure on policymakers around the world to pass Right to Repair laws. Right to Repair measures even came into force in the UK and EU for the first time.

The government made great fanfare about this, and presented these rules as “job done”.

While these rules do create a very important precedent — most importantly, that a few products be designed with disassembly for repair in mind — they are far from the universal Right to Repair we need.

So we launched a petition to keep up the pressure here in the UK. With over 5,000 signatures, our next milestone is 7,500 or even 10,000. Please share via email with your networks.

We’ll present this petition to Defra (our Ministry of the Environment) and BEIS (our Ministry for Energy and Industry) in the new year. And we’ll keep playing our part in the UK and in the EU through the European campaign we co-founded.

This year has been tough for many

We’d also like to observe and recognise that like 2020, this past year was also difficult for many members of our community. Some lost loved ones, some experienced ill health both mental and physical, many were forced to shelter and feel alone. And this has been made all the more difficult this year, as opposed to 2020, by the sense that many people have “moved on”.

While we continue to invest energy and caring in our online community, we know this is not a substitute for offline activities. And no amount of activity can “solve” certain problems.

To those we’ve missed these past two years, we “see” you and we’re sending light and love to all. We miss you.

Bring on 2022

We’re tentatively hopeful for 2022. We have big plans, which we hope will be possible: another global Fixfest (fingers crossed!), the biggest ever International Repair Day, and a very special new project we’re launching in London.

As we look ahead to our 10th year, we’re incredibly proud of how far we’ve come and thankful for your help getting us here.

If you are able to support our work, please consider giving what you can.

Nearly ten years ago, we held our first Restart Party in a London pub. Since then, we’ve kept records of every device that’s come through the door to learn why our electronics break.

Now we’re hoping to use this information to push for pro-repair regulation.

Along with our community, we’ve identified some of the most common points of failure for a few types of device. But we also learned that we need to get better at recording this data in the first place.

People-powered research

We now have data on over 21,000 broken items and what was done to fix them. This information comes from volunteers at our own events and others who use our community repair platform, restarters.net.

Thanks to our partners in the Open Repair Alliance who also collect this kind of data, we were able to include extra data from other networks around the world.

Together, this brought the total to nearly 50,000 broken items.

That’s a lot of data. So to analyse it, we focused on three types of products that the European Commission would be investigating:

• Printers
• Tablets
• The batteries that power many of our gadgets.

Our aim was to use people-power to look at each dead printer, broken tablet and battery issue to work out what went wrong or what prevented its repair.

Anyone could read about these broken devices and choose the main problem or barrier to repair described from a list of options.

Designing these online activities was not easy and we learnt a lot along the way. But even so, more than 300 people submitted over 6,500 opinions about 2,000 devices for the three product types.

What did we learn?

Thanks to this collective effort, we were able to identify the most common reasons printers, tablets and batteries become unusable.

In addition, many of the items we looked at were fairly old, demonstrating that people really want to keep using their devices for longer.

But we also found that there are lots of barriers to repair that make this tricky. Some of the biggest are the lack of spare parts and repair documentation as well as designs that make opening the product difficult without causing extra damage.

You can see our full results and download the data for yourself here:

• Printers
• Tablets
• Batteries

More than anything though, it’s clear that the quality of the data we collect at repair events matters. For many of the devices recorded, there simply wasn’t enough information about the problem to be useful.

So, for this kind of analysis to reach its full potential, we all need to do a better job of capturing information about the repairs we carry out at community events. For example, we could take photos of the items we see and improve our Fixometer tool. We could also recruit more data volunteers: people tasked with recording information about the devices brought to events and what happens to each.

How will we use this data?

We want rules that make products easier to fix. And we’re already using data to push for a real Right to Repair. Just recently, we used previous findings to undermine an industry lobbyist’s anti-repair arguments in an EU policy meeting about upcoming regulations for smartphone and tablet repairability.

As a follow up, we also contributed our findings on common fault types in tablets, making the case for the need for better access to spare parts and repair information for this product category as well.

Next, we hope to increase the pressure on European policymakers for regulating printer repairability and battery-related issues in consumer products. For printers, the European Commission is considering rejecting a “voluntary agreement” proposed by industry, which ignores repairability for consumer printers.

And as for batteries, European institutions are working towards a Batteries Regulation, which must prioritise user-replaceability as well as the availability of spare parts.

We’ll also work on improving the quality of the data we collect at events. But for this, we’ll need your help!

To follow our latest work and hear about opportunities to get involved, consider signing up for our email updates:

This was a team effort

We couldn’t have done this without our community. Thank you to everyone who took part in our PrintCat, TabiCat and BattCat online activities! For more, read about the first part of this project, which focused on exploring the environmental impact of our devices.

We are hugely grateful to to The ACTION (Participatory science toolkit against pollution) project for funding this work and for their support.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824603.

This blog post reflects the author’s views. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

We’re happy to announce our new sponsorship by eSpares, an online parts store based in Birmingham.

This builds on generous support from eSpares for our Laptop Repair Team during the pandemic this year. With their match-funding, we mobilised a team to repair laptops for children and people in need in London. We granted on a large part of that funding to our amazing partners in that effort.

When we visited eSpares, we saw how hard they work to make sure customers get the right spare part and have the information they need to fix appliances. We met those making videos for their YouTube channel, which is really simple and well presented, and people who answer calls from customers.

Sponsorship: a win-win partnership

We also could sense that eSpares wants to promote repair in the community, as well as pro-repair policies.

Companies like eSpares are essential parts of the UK’s repair economy. The challenges they face directly impact our ability to use products for longer. We’re glad to have their financial support, but also add their perspectives to our policy work.

This is the kind of sponsorship we’re most interested – a win-win, where we are partners in promoting a better relationship with electronics and electrical products.

eSpares’ Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Sharp, tells us he’s as pleased as we are to be officially partnered up

I have a huge amount of respect for The Restart Project and the work they do. Their efforts to make electrical repairs more accessible for all help to protect our environment for future generations.

Our shared goals to facilitate electrical repairs and avoid e-waste mean we’ve worked with The Restart Project in the past, sharing their campaigns with our customers and supporting their laptop drive back in early 2021. Now, I am extremely pleased to be sponsoring The Restart Project in all they do.

This post is cross-posted from the European Right to Repair campaign. Please sign our UK petition for right to repair for mobiles, including self-repair, if you don’t want to depend on the whims of Apple

Today, Apple announced that some parts, tools, and manuals — starting with iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 — will be made available to individual consumers in the United States from early 2022.

The Right to Repair campaign welcomes this announcement but remains cautious about the implementation, which is not expected to be applicable to Europe until later in 2022.

After years of resistance, the company is now acknowledging for the first time that repair and self-repair are key when it comes to the sustainability of their products and the satisfaction of consumers.

“This move represents a major reversal from Apple, who have spent untold millions lobbying against legislation which would require them to do this. We hope it represents a genuine, new direction that recognises we must have more repair options”

Chloé Mikolajczak, campaigner at Right to Repair Europe

Devil in the detail

In the past, we’ve been concerned with the hyperbolic language used by Apple about the risks of self repair. We hope such language will not be used to discourage uptake of this new service.

In order for “Self Service Repair” to actually be beneficial for consumers, it is essential for Apple to make its spare parts available at an affordable price as high costs are still the main reason why repairs do not take place. High cost of spare parts were one of the main barriers to the widespread uptake of Apple’s Independent Repair Program (IRP) last year. In addition, the ordering process must be simple and fast in order to minimize the time and logistical effort of a repair.

In the past, the campaign has criticised Apple for its measures that hurt independent repairers. More recently, it was only after harsh criticism that the company announced that it would withdraw software locks that prevent independent repairers and end users from replacing the screen of the new iPhone 13. However consumers and repair professionals still need a binding commitment from Apple that all such software locks will be removed, allowing the use of parts from Apple as well as third party providers in the future. Currently, Apple’s approach to part-pairing could mean that they will have increasing control over the market – deciding the price of spare parts, and preventing users from choosing third party ones.

As the devil is in the details, we’ll be monitoring the exact terms and conditions of this initiative.

Legislation needed now more than ever

Meanwhile we’ll keep fighting for the development and implementation of binding Right to Repair regulations in Europe to ensure repair of electronics is available to everyone, in the long term and becomes the norm.

We’re campaigning for ambitious ecodesign regulations for smartphones and tablets, and witnessing how industry representatives – including Apple – consistently lobby against access to a wide range of spare parts and repair information for consumers and professional repairers alike. If Apple is serious about repair, this needs to stop.

This post is was originally published on Inside Track, the Green Alliance policy blog.

We’re hearing a lot about reducing meat eating, flying and other high-carbon behaviours as COP26 gets going in the UK. But there’s one topic which is still getting very little attention from policy makers or the media, and that is: our voracious consumption of consumer goods.

As it turns out, taking action to allow people to use products for longer is one of the most publicly popular policy measures to reduce our carbon impact. In a recent YouGov poll that we commissioned in Great Britain, an overwhelming majority (81 per cent) supported an extension of the right to repair for electronics, such as smartphones and laptops, design for repair, access to spare parts and repair documentation.

And those we asked cut right across party political divides and demographics. This matches, and even surpasses, polling in North America and Europe. Simply put, the right to repair is hugely popular.

Most people are frustrated by the throwaway economy

People are very frustrated with the cost and waste built into the system. Many have given up trying to repair their products, but not everyone has. Those who do try are stymied by various barriers.

Our YouGov poll showed 30 per cent of Britons who threw away or replaced a broken electronic device only did so after being unable to repair it themselves, or because professional repair was either too expensive or impossible.

Even at our free community repair events, called Restart Parties, 47 per cent of repairs are not completed on the day. This is mostly down to bad design and a lack of access to spare parts.

In July, the UK government implemented the first ever measures requiring design for repair of washing machines, dishwashers, fridges and TVs. These ecodesign measures, set out by the European Union with UK support, also require access to spare parts and repair documentation by professionals. They set a good precedent but are not yet the broad right to repair we urgently need. Europe is moving ahead of us, with plans to expand these rules to new products, like laptops, mobiles and tablets. Whereas, in the UK, Defra and BEIS have been promoting a glacially slow consultation on doing the same, while big tech and industry are pouring millions into lobbying against the right to repair across the world.

Repair creates jobs and strengthens communities 

Repairable products are not just better for consumers, they create jobs. A recent report by Green Alliance suggests that remanufacturing and repair work could generate work for more than 450,000 people in the UK by 2035. We’re part of the European Right to Repair campaign, which is increasingly gaining support from businesses, including in the UK. These businesses are part of the reuse and repair economy, and are poised to expand and create jobs, but they need more government action to keep repair competitive.

And it’s not just businesses that need more. Our poll shows widespread support for right to repair to be extended to community repair groups (like repair cafés) and consumers. Seventy eight per cent of respondents who would support an expansion of the right to repair to more products say consumers and community repair groups should have the same or more rights than repair shops.

The measures announced in July only give repair shops and professional repairers access to a wide range of spare parts and repair manuals, not to consumers or community repairers, like the newly launched Community Repair Network.

Thousands have signed a petition for change

Since July, thousands have signed our petition to ‘Give everyone the real right to repair’, asking for it to be extended to everyone and more products, and to lower the cost of VAT for repairs.

Aside from the troubling fact that the UK is still the second highest producer of electronic waste in the world per capita, according to recent UN data, our throwaway economy has huge carbon impacts. If we take into account our ‘consumption emissions’ embodied in imported goods, which we currently don’t count as our own, UK emissions almost double.

Fixing the throwaway problem could have huge positive carbon impacts. In 2018, Green Alliance, CIEMAP and the University of Cardiff modelled the carbon impacts of popular measures to stop this colossal waste of resources. If the government took action to extend product lifetimes and improve their design, it would reduce emissions by 26.2 million tonnes a year. This is more than a fifth of the UK’s annual transport emissions.

The Climate Change Committee has observed that the government is highly reliant on new, emerging technologies to meet UK carbon reduction commitments. Perhaps this is because it is frightened that behaviour change measures will be unpopular. But when it comes to the everyday technology already in our pockets, living rooms and on our desks, there is resounding evidence that most of us want to be able to repair it and keep it for longer, preventing emissions at scale.

Over the summer we announced that one of our founder-Co-Directors was moving on from the role for personal reasons. We’re excited to announce that our rather tricky recruitment — it’s a nerve-wracking process in a small organisation — ended with a real treat.

Fiona Dear will be joining Restart in early 2022 as Co-Director, UK Strategy and Operations. She brings over a decade of campaigning experience on the climate with her, having helped The Climate Coalition campaign for climate ambition — and action — in the UK and at the last three big UN climate talks. Most recently, as Head of Campaigns, she led the development of the Great Big Green Week ahead of the COP26 climate summit that’s coming to Glasgow this November. She’s also a zero waste activist in her spare time in her community in North London.

It feels like a great fit for Restart. She’s looking forward to discovering the world of electronic repair – she won’t be the first to join us and hit the ground running on that. She shares

“I’m passionate about cutting waste. I spend my spare time upcycling and repairing, and I can’t pass a broken chair on the street without trying to rescue it – you could say it’s how I’m wired. I spent much of the last year helping develop a community group to reduce waste, and I’m excited to be starting a role, which brings together my campaigning experience and personal projects.

Public concern about the environment is at an all time high. In audience research on environmental issues, waste is one of the highest-ranking environmental concerns, so I’m looking forward to helping electronic repair get the attention it deserves.”

Looking forward to next year and beyond

As we look to 2022, our tenth anniversary, we’re super excited to welcome Fiona at a crucial time for waste and the Right to Repair in the UK. And we’ve also got some great news we’ll make public soon about our work in London, which Fiona will lead.

It’s a strange and difficult time for in-person events, and we may refrain from hosting our customary mid-winter party. We’ll explore ways that Fiona can meet the London community, and meet allies across the UK.

If you get the chance, please welcome her and take time to have a chat about the future.

ITV Tonight covered the Right to Repair, with footage and interviews from Cambridgeshire Repair Cafes and The Restart Project. This show follows on earlier coverage in the year by ITV Tonight, and we’re thrilled the team has followed up.

The presenter wrote viewing figures were high, no surprise to us, we know everybody loves repair.

If you are visiting our site for the first time, and agree with what we said, we have a small request for you…

ITV viewers, please sign our petition

In July, the UK government implemented the first-ever measures requiring design for repair of washing machines, dishwashers, fridges and TVs. These measures, designed by the European Union with UK support, also require access to spare parts and repair documentation by professionals.

They are a good precedent, but not yet the Right to Repair we urgently need. The government is moving extremely slowly and this is clearly not a priority. Meanwhile, Big Tech and industry are pouring millions into lobbying against the Right to Repair.

Thousands have signed The Restart Project’s petition to “Give Everyone the Real Right to Repair” asking for the Right to Repair to be extended to all, for more products and to lower the cost of VAT for repairs.

Sign the petition

(If you can’t see the button above, find the petition here.)

We need more signatures before we deliver this petition to government soon. Please sign our petition and participate in your local International Repair Day event on Saturday 16th October.

Start your own repair group

You can find help at the newly-launched Community Repair Network, comprised of groups from across the UK. The Network can put you in touch with your nearest group, who can help you get started.

Thanks for watching and please feel free to leave a comment for us below or on social media.

We’re celebrating the fifth edition of International Repair Day with a number of activities in the lead up here in London and online.

With COP26 coming up next month, there is no better time for us to concentrate on how our work as a repair community is vital in the ongoing fight against climate change. In light of this, the theme for this Repair Day 2021 is: repair lowers carbon emissions. 

This year’s theme: repair lowers carbon emissions

One of the key contributors to carbon emissions is manufacturing – and that includes electronics. From mining resources to processing materials to shipping products, much of the carbon impact of our devices occurs before they are even turned on. 

We recently found that for your average smartphone, 79% of its CO2e impact occurs before it is used by the consumer. For a product like a blender, it’s around 84%. This starkly puts into perspective the impact that buying new has, instead of repairing or buying second-hand.

We estimate our volunteers have prevented 432 tonnes of carbon emissions fixing devices at over 2,000 community events. When you repair a broken item, you no longer have to buy a new one, avoiding new emissions.

Scaling this reduction in consumer emissions globally would have a massive impact on our planet. The European Environmental Bureau found in 2019 that “extending the lifetime of the EU’s stock of smartphones, notebooks, washing machines and vacuum cleaners by five years would save almost 10m tonnes of emissions (CO2eq) annually by 2030… And even just a one-year extension would result in 4m tonnes of emissions savings annually, equivalent to 2m cars off the roads.”

Sign our petition for the Right to Repair

We can’t do this though without a thriving professional repair economy, our incredible repair community, and the Right to Repair. If you live in the UK, please sign and share our petition for the real Right to Repair. We’d like to double or triple the number of signatures.

While we are not able to host a large fixing event this year, we’re not at all idle here at Restart.

Join us in person or online

We’re hosting these events in London, but please check the official International Repair Day listings for events near you.

8th October 12pm online: preceding Repair Day, we are co-hosting a lunch-time webinar together with the European Right to Repair Campaign. It’s called “Repair Lowers Carbon Emissions: exploring the impact of consumption emissions”. We’re thrilled to have special guest Professor John Barrett from the University of Leeds. Barrett worked with the Climate Assembly and he’s an accessible expert on the topic. Please book a ticket, as we have limited space.

11th October at UCL: We’re excited to repair with UCL students at The Institute of Making. Join the waiting list if you are a UCL student.

14th October offline and online: We’re speaking at the Royal Academy of Engineers at an internal roundtable event on the Right to Repair.  Later at 5pm the public is invited to attend “Right to repair: how can we end built-in obsolescence?” with Mark Miodownik – we won’t be there but will be attending live online. You can too but you need to book via Linked In.

14th October on ITV, 7:30pm: This ‘Tonight’ documentary is about the Right to Repair. We have no idea what it’ll be like but fingers crossed it’ll raise awareness about overconsumption, repair and the real Right to Repair in hundreds of thousands of homes across the UK.

16th October, 4-6pm in West London: On Repair Day proper, all are invited to join our community social. We’re visiting Mark Phillips’ photography exhibition “Repair is Essential” together at The Tabernacle in West London. Mark contributes photography to The Restart Project, as a part of his global interest in repair. Don’t miss this exhibition, it’s on until 17th October!

Launching the Community Repair Network

Additionally, we’re celebrating the launch of the Community Repair Network here in the UK.

This emerging network started as a series of conversations between various repair groups and regional networks over the last year. We realised it’s not always easy for these groups to be in touch across the country, but given the chance to connect, together we may be able to raise the profile of repair, share and learn from each other, support local efforts and scale our impact.

And so, along with friends and partners in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we are thrilled to be working to strengthen and support grassroots repair in every community. Visit the network’s new website for more information.

Next year, we’ll be celebrating 10 years of The Restart Project. If you aren’t a fan of decades or decimal numbers, we’ll be a binary 1010.

Which is kind of poetically perfect, because two people, Janet and Ugo, have been piloting the organisation since it began. We started out with cash donations and volunteer efforts in 2012, and then loaned the fledgling charity the £5,000 required to register in 2013.

Now we’ve built a small, stable charity with a core paid team of eight people. It’s driven by the efforts of many volunteers and supported by grant funding, your donations and income generating projects and consultancies.

It’s time for Janet to move on from co-piloting Restart, and for Ugo to finally fully focus on international policy work, and work with someone new. (Janet is not doing a full mic drop, and will stay on to lead on Restart’s communications for a transitional period.)

What’s ahead for Restart

We have yet to see a world where our relationship with technology is fixed — with communities and planet at the centre. So our vision for the future remains steady.

But we’ve been working on a new multi-year strategy as an organisation to respond to the external context and these changes.

We’ll be focusing on equity, fairness and access to technology in the UK and in London. We’ll be calling out greenwashing, and communicating the impact of our electronics consumption at a global level, and continuing to steward the European Right to Repair campaign.

Who we’re recruiting

So we’re looking for someone to join Ugo and lead Restart in its second decade, with a focus on the UK, and specifically London.

This person will develop our programmes in London, manage our community outreach in the UK, and represent us in Whitehall and beyond across the country. This co-director will help in fundraising and work directly with our Operations Lead.

We’re looking for someone who will enjoy working in an agile organisation with an excellent team dynamic and flat-as-we-can organisational structure. This role will require weekly presence in London and a real familiarity with the London context, but we’re super flexible about where a candidate is based.

This is not a conventional role, and we won’t be conducting a conventional hiring process. We’d like to hear from interested people with an informal expression of interest – and crucially – your questions, by September 5th. We’ll respond as appropriate, either in writing or arranging an informal chat with you. This recruitment will be rolling, but we hope to be in a position to do further interviews in early September.

Update: we’ve announced our new Co-Director, Fiona Dear, joining Restart in early 2022

This week we’ve launched “BattCat”, our latest interactive, people-powered investigation into why devices fail. This time we’re asking for your help to learn why repairs involving batteries are often too hard to complete.

Try BattCat

Batteries are hard to replace

We’ve probably all seen devices stop working because something went wrong with the battery. Often battery problems are more complex to fix than they should be and community repair volunteers struggle to repair them.

Together with partners from the Open Repair Alliance, we’ve collected data on a thousand repairs that couldn’t be completed at repair events, due to issues linked with batteries. This is about 50% of all repairs attempts involving batteries. We want to learn more about the causes: is it because of the price or scarce availability of spare parts? Or is it because of product designs making it hard to replace the battery?

With your help, we want to categorise what went wrong with each of these repairs. We’ll use the insights to push for legislation to make future products easier to repair.

Pushing for the Right to Repair

This is a timely issue, as the European Commission is currently investigating new legislation aiming to improve the environmental performance of batteries and products containing batteries. One aspect being considered is a removability and replaceability clause: ensuring that all products come with a removable and user-replaceable battery. We think this is important from the perspective of repairing products.

However, very little independent data exists about how battery-related problems make repairing electrical and electronic products difficult or impossible. In some cases, hard-to-remove batteries might mean products become e-waste simply because the battery health is reduced. We want to use the results of BattCat as evidence of the need for user-replaceable batteries in future consumer products.

Get involved

Please try BattCat, and let us know what you think about it. If you’re curious about our work in this area, you can join an event on Saturday 31st July, where we’ll jointly work on BattCat as well as on completing our previous investigations: on printers with PrintCat and tablets withTabiCat.

Join our event

We are hugely grateful to to The ACTION (Participatory science toolkit against pollution) project for funding this work and for their support.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824603. This blog post reflects the author’s views. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

It’s hard to characterise this year’s reading list – there is probably more “nature” in this list than in previous years. But not the kind you might be expecting. We’ve also got a fair bit of naughtiness, disruption and, as you might expect, discussion of where people and planet intersect with tech.

If you like listening, we review three of the books on the list in our latest radio show.

Let us know what you are reading this summer in the comments, or in our online community Restarters.net.

Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford

We saw Crawford’s epic diagram of the impacts of a smart speaker at the V&A Museum last year. And we really appreciate that this volume starts with a chapter called “Earth”. So often ignored in tech circles, but really it is the starting point for all technology. We can’t wait to get our hands on this Atlas.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

ICYMI, you will never look at fungi the same way again after reading this book. Mycelial networks are such dynamic lifeforms, it’s harder to characterise what they *are*, and easier to characterise what they *do*. And fungal remediation can clean up all kinds of man-made messes including electronic waste. You don’t need to take mushrooms to learn that fungi also hold the keys to our minds, our health and potentially self-healing buildings.

Flash Forward: An Illustrated Guide to Possible (And Not So Possible) Tomorrows by Rose Eveleth

We love comics and we love this podcast – this seems like a great idea. An anthology of comics by different authors approaching different aspects to our near futures, and alternative-universe futures. We believe it’s more useful to conceive of futures, not a predetermined, singular “future”.

Free, Fair, and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich

Steal this book. No wait, you don’t need to steal this book. The authors are sharing it for anyone to read. This book offers powerful insights into how “commoning” could improve our society, economy and world. It seeks to dispel myths surrounding the commons and opens up the concept to explore how it could be applied to all aspects of our lives for a more collective and open source existence. 

Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel

We’re no stranger to the dangers of overconsumption but it can sometimes be difficult to see past the framework that we are currently living under. Hickel’s book helps build a vision of what our new reality could look like in a post-capitalist society. He shows us that our world did not always operate in this way and it could – and needs to – change once again.

Our Biggest Experiment: A History of the Climate Crisis by Alice Bell

We feel grateful that Bell left the academy to campaign and write readable books about her favourite topic, climate change. This story does not start with an observatory on a volcano in Hawaii, or with Exxon executives suppressing the truth fifty years ago, but instead starts in the Victorian era. It starts with the story of Eunice Newton Foote, an American scientist who warned of carbon dioxide causing climate change in 1856.

The Art of Disruption: A Manifesto For Real Change by Magid Magid

This is a splendid self-help book by Sheffield’s own ex-Lord Mayor, ex-MEP and all-around champion of outshining your enemies, Magid Magid. We love his anecdotes the best, about making friends on the bus, dodging serious bad vibes in politics, and living his best life. We’re firm believers in seeing and sharing the absurdity and joy in our lives, and Magid shows the way.

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert 

This is a book about humans trying to fix problems in the environment, and then making them worse, and then trying to fix them again. It’s about how we’re past conversation and preservation and now onto a stage of intervening to try and avert irreversible disasters. And how hard that is.

Undoing Optimization: Civic Action in Smart Cities by Alison Powell 

What are smart cities? Who creates them and who are they for? Powell explores these questions and more in Undoing Optimization. Her book delivers a thoughtful and comprehensive critique of the concept of smart cities, while also providing a broader look at the tension between corporate power, state power and citizen power. 

We Are Bellingcat: An Intelligence Agency for the People by Eliot Higgins 

We’re here for any book that tells the story of a community of collaborative geeks, who look to solve problems and mysteries together. Bellingcat starts with Higgins at his laptop in Leicester, and tells the story about how he honed his skills together with others around the world, forming teams of “amateur” sleuths who solved the mystery behind the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 in the Ukraine and exposed various war crimes in Syria.

[links to purchase books are affiliate links so that you can support both us and independent bookshops via bookshop.org!]

Earlier this year, when schools closed again and we went into lockdown, communities and volunteers across the country stepped up to help their neighbours without computers. In London alone, we got to know thirteen organisations who collect donated laptops and supply them to those in need.

These groups worked tirelessly to help as many people as possible, spending their weekends working on this, with some turning their homes into refurbishment workshops. Together, they supplied thousands of devices to students, families, isolated people and others who needed access.

But some devices that these organisations received needed some more attention.

Our Laptop Repair Team

Fortunately, fixing up laptops and computers is right up our alley! So we partnered up with three donation schemes: Catbytes, Mer-IT and Ready Tech Go, and we brought together some fixer volunteers.

Our Laptop Repair Team received the damaged laptops right to their homes – delivered by pedal-powered couriers. Some work and some spare parts later, most of these laptops were ready for a new life, helping a new person or family.

Once it was safe to do so, the Laptop Repair Team visited Catbytes in Lewisham, South London. We helped clearing out their backlog of devices, fixing many laptops on the day and sourcing spare parts for the remaining ones.

Through this, we worked on 58 devices and fixed 43 of these. The main barrier to repair? Spare parts costed too much. And some devices were simply too old to meet the needs of any future user. But most repairs were quite straight forward.

Thank you to the thirteen volunteers involved. Thank you for sharing your time and skills, for helping us hit the ground running with this work, and for being pro-active in finding solutions. You’ve made a real difference in many people’s lives.

Your financial support will go even further

None of this would have been possible without the kind donations we received. Thank you to the 58 people who contributed to our crowdfunder in January, and to eSpares for matching their donations. The donations helped us buy spare parts like keyboards and batteries, and pay for the deliveries.

All remaining funds were donated to Mer-IT, Catbytes and Ready Tech Go. We estimate they can refurbish and repair 120 more laptops with this support.

This work not only represents real value for money, it reminds donors of the value in the computers in their cupboards, and links local people, saving precious resources from waste.

Thank you to these three stellar organisations. Your work inspires us!

The future – building on this work

The need has not disappeared. In fact, with families being forced to self-isolate, it’s coming back again. And there are groups that have consistently been excluded who still need support, like refugees, victims of domestic abuse or human trafficking.

So please continue to support groups like Catbytes, Mer-IT and Ready Tech Go working on refurbishing and donating equipment to people in need.

We are looking at ways to deepen and continue these vital partnerships with grassroots reuse groups as we plan into the future. We have some really exciting plans in development – so watch this space!

This post is by Libby Peake, head of resource policy at Green Alliance, and Ugo Vallauri, policy lead at The Restart Project.

We’ve all experienced the frustration of a gadget or appliance failing before it should and finding it too hard, too expensive or just too much hassle to get it fixed. In fact, it seems to be happening more and more often, and the government has noticed, saying it wants to address wasteful and aggravating premature obsolescence.

Last week, the UK adopted what it described as “tough new rules” meaning that manufacturers will have to make repair information and spare parts available for repairs for up to ten years for some new white goods and televisions. The move aligns Great Britain with the EU and Northern Ireland, where the same legislation came into effect in March.

In announcing the new standards, the government boasted it was giving us all a new “legal right for repair”. However, this is not true. In reality we are still far from having such a legal right in the UK.

The new rules only begin to address the first of the three pillars of the right to repair, which are: 1. products need to be designed for repairability; 2. spare parts and repair services need to be affordable; and 3. people should have access to the information they need to carry out repairs.

The main barrier to repair has not been addressed

This new legislation is certainly an important step: products will have to be designed to be more repairable, which will help the move away from the throwaway economy. But there’s still a long way to go, not least because it has not addressed the information barrier for product owners or the cost issues, and these are two of the key barriers to repairing products.

White goods repairers highlight the cost of spare parts as the main reason pushing people to replace a product, rather than repair it. This new regulation doesn’t put any caps on the prices that manufacturers can charge for spare parts. And it does nothing to make repair more financially attractive to consumers, for instance by removing VAT, which could reduce the cost of all professional repairs.

The legislation also allows the practice of ‘bundling’ multiple smaller components together with some common spare parts. This means that if, for example, the bearings in your washing machine fail, you’ll still have no choice but to replace the entire drum, with costs comparable to replacing the machine. Similarly, when the heater in a dishwasher fails, you’ll have to replace the entire heat pump, doubling the cost of repair, even though the pump may still be working.

Only a few products are included in the legislation

What’s more, the new regulations only tackle a few product categories: washing machines, dishwashers, fridges and electronic screens, including TVs. We know that work is ongoing at the EU level to bring repairability requirements to products such as smartphones, tablets and laptops, but it’s not yet clear whether the UK will follow suit.

That’s a particular concern as the UK produces more electronic waste per person than anywhere in the world apart from Norway. At 23.9kg a year per person, that’s more than the weight of a suitcase you’d typically be allowed to take with you onto a plane.

The potential effectiveness of the changes is also being held back – both in the UK and EU – by the fact that it only applies to new products, so it won’t increase the ability to repair or provide spare parts or repair manuals for products already in circulation.

It doesn’t extend to a consumer right to repair

The law also won’t ensure that all the parts you might need as an owner of a faulty product will be available. Although widely reported as a ‘right to repair’, it actually only gives professional repair services access to the widest range of spare parts, excluding product owners and community repair initiatives. For instance, it only demands that manufacturers provide consumers with replacement external power supplies and remote controls for their TVs. It’s hard to consider either of those items as spare parts needed for repair. Some manufacturers might go further than this, but they won’t be required to under the regulation.

This is a missed opportunity, and could reduce the range of repairs that can be performed. It prevents anyone with engineering skills from repairing their own dishwasher. And shouldn’t a willing DIY-er or Repair café volunteer be able to repair a television with the right parts and instructions?

People really care about reducing waste. Witness the outrage at the recent revelations of Amazon’s policy of destroying unsold or returned goods in the UK. Green Alliance’s research with Cardiff University in 2018 showed 75 per cent of people in the UK want the government to require manufacturers to make products more repairable.

If the UK is serious about doing better than Europe, it should take steps urgently to extend access to spare parts and repair information for all products to everyone and address the high cost of repairs. This would be a real and universal right to repair, so that all products can be repaired, reused and kept out of landfill, incineration and recycling centres for as long as possible.

The Restart Project has launched a petition asking for clear and ambitious commitments from the government to give people a genuine right to repair.

Every device we buy comes with a hidden environmental cost. Understanding this hidden cost is crucial to learning just how green repair is, so we’ve been on a mission to reveal the true environmental impact of the products we buy.

We first investigated this issue back in 2014 and used the data we found to power the Fixometer – our tool that helps community repair groups estimate the environmental impact of repairs made at their events. A lot has changed in the last 7 years, so the time has come to update and expand this data.

The data that many companies refuse to share

After putting a call out to our community, a handful of brave volunteers came together to drive the investigation. Together, we scoured the internet for data that could tell us about the carbon impacts of the products we see at community repair events, such as laptops or toasters.

We soon found that the best sources for this information were lifecycle assessment (LCA) reports. Manufacturers, academics and consultancy firms use these reports to measure the environmental impacts of products. We were most interested in how much greenhouse gas is produced at each stage of a product’s life, measured as CO2 equivalent (CO2e).

LCA reports for two models of laptop, one Dell and the other HP.

Finding these LCA reports isn’t easy. Many manufacturers simply don’t produce them. Some do, but only a small number actually make them available to the public. We found that:

• Only a small number of tech companies share data for some types of IT products, such as laptops, desktops and monitors. (Most of these companies seemingly publish this data to get environmental accreditation, such as EPEAT ecolabels.)
• For most household electrical/electronic devices, there is very little publicly available data about environmental impacts, especially during the manufacturing phase. Much of the data we did find came from academic journals.

We even asked some manufacturers to share this data – they didn’t help us. Most played dumb or ignored us completely.

As a result, we couldn’t find more than a few examples for nearly half of the product categories we explored.

Ultimately, almost every manufacturer we looked at talked proudly about corporate sustainability on their company website.

But we need companies to put their data where their mouth is, otherwise they are simply greenwashing.

What did we learn?

Despite these challenges, we analysed data on nearly 500 products across a wide range of product categories. And here’s the headline:

For most types of item we see at community repair events, most of the global warming impact occurred before it was used for the first time.

That’s because for many products, extracting raw materials and manufacturing are very carbon intensive processes. You can learn more about this with our interactive ‘Materials Matter’ activities.

Here’s how some of the common items we see at repair events stack up:

But let’s dig a bit deeper. The most common devices we see at repair events are medium-sized laptops. So, we looked at 64 models of medium-sized laptop from Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Microsoft. We found that an average laptop of this size represents about 263 kg of embodied CO2e. That’s the equivalent of a flight from London to Rome and around 81% of the total CO2e each device produces over its entire life. For most of these laptops, the manufacturer assumed a lifespan of just 4 years.

Here’s how the hidden environmental cost of a laptop builds up over such a short lifespan:

The impact of replacing a device so often is clear. When products aren’t designed to last or be repaired, manufacturers’ emissions increase. So what can we do about it?

Reducing our consumption

As consumers, the main way we can reduce the hidden environmental cost of our devices is to keep using them for as long as possible. By extending the life of our gadgets and fixing them when they break, we can slow down the stream of newly manufactured devices.

Here’s what happens if we extend the life of a laptop by 50% or 100%:

The longer we can use a device, the lower the CO2e impact will be over time.

We can’t do this alone, and we can’t rely on companies

But manufacturers keep making repair more and more difficult. So to reduce the hidden environmental cost of our devices, we also need to change the system that generates so much CO2e while producing short-lived, unrepairable products. We need manufacturers to clean up production and remove barriers to repair. And given we can’t rely on companies to do this voluntarily, we need a real Right to Repair.

If you’re in the UK, you can take action right now by signing our petition to the UK government. If you’re in Europe, you can sign up for updates from the European campaign.

Watch our webinar

We ran a webinar with Jessika Richter from The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics in Lund in September 2021 where we explored this work in more detail. You can watch it below:

(Can’t see a video above? Click here to watch it on YouTube)

What now?

Next we’ll use what we’ve learned to update our Fixometer tool. The data we’ve found will help us improve the reliability and accuracy of future calculations, allowing community repair groups around the world to better understand their impact. We’ll also be able to add calculations for new categories of products, including non-electrical items for the first time.

We have published our data here under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

And in the meantime, we’ll continue to push for products to be made more repairable.

If you’d like to learn more about our work with data and the hidden environmental cost of our devices sign up for updates below:

This was a team effort

We couldn’t have done this without our amazing team of volunteers. A huge thank you to Kiki, Mark, Mel, Monique, Steve & Stuart for all your help!

We are hugely grateful to to The ACTION (Participatory science toolkit against pollution) project for funding this work and for their support.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824603.

This blog post reflects the author’s views. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Today we’re launching “TabiCat”, a fun opportunity to collaboratively analyse data on  over 900 tablets brought to repair events around the world. The data comes from our own Restart Parties, as well as datasets from other organisations: anstiftung, Fixit Clinic, Repair Cafe Foundation and Repair Cafe Wales. It is collected and published as part of the Open Repair Alliance.

By analysing the data, we can learn more about the devices – including insights to help push Right to Repair regulation in Europe, the UK and beyond.

How you can get involved

Head over to TabiCat and join the investigation. You’ll be presented with information about a broken tablet and you’ll be able to select the most appropriate fault from a comprehensive list. Once you’ve selected an option, you’ll be presented with information on another tablet. The more tablet faults you can categorise, the more we learn! TabiCat shows each tablet to up to three people to help confirm the right fault category. If you want to learn more and provide feedback on your experience with TabiCat, you can join a conversation about it here.

Try TabiCat

Why are we focusing on tablets? 

There’s no regulation on tablets’ repairability anywhere in the world. However, the EU is working on ecodesign measures to apply to both smartphones and tablets. This is a great opportunity to bring the perspective of real people attempting to repair devices at community repair events.

The draft regulation we have seen doesn’t include access to most spare parts or repair information for community repair initiatives as well as consumers. And we know that manufacturers will do all they can to further reduce requirements to make spare parts available at all.

What we hope to achieve

By analysing our data on tablets, we can make the case for long-term support for tablets – including availability of spare parts. Our insights can help explain that plenty of people would like to keep their existing devices working for longer, and repair them when needed.

We need your help now, to help us complete TabiCat by the end of June. This will allow us to submit in July our evidence to the public consultation on smartphones and tablets recently launched by the European Commission. And we hope progress at European level will also help push for ambitious regulation in the UK.

TabiCat is the second in a series of three microtasks we’re running as part of our participation in the ACTION accelerator, engaging citizen scientists with open data. Over the next few months, there will be more opportunities to analyse data collected at repair events – so if you enjoy TabiCat, stay in touch for more! You can also still help us complete our first microtask on printers –  PrintCat.

We are hugely grateful to to The ACTION (Participatory science toolkit against pollution) project for funding this work and for their support.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824603. This blog post reflects the author’s views. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I have been a member of Hillingdon Friends of the Earth since 1987 and the Coordinator for about two years. A lot of what we do as Friends of the Earth is campaigning against environmentally damaging projects such as airport expansion, so repair is a pleasant positive activity for us.

What inspired you to start hosting Restart Parties? What inspires you to keep on?

About 5 years ago a lady came to one of our Friends of the Earth monthly meetings and told us about the Restart Project. As the concept of repair fits in perfectly with the Friends of the Earth ethos, it didn’t take much encouragement for us to agree to host our own parties. We held our first one in June 2016 and we were holding 2-3 a year until the pandemic struck. We are really looking forward to resuming face to face Restart events, but have had several successful online events jointly with Hackney Fixers. With the challenges facing us due to the climate emergency, we need to spread the word about repair and how much energy and raw materials repairs can save, compared to replacement of items, electronic or otherwise. (We do sewing repairs too).

Did you know anything about tech or electronics before hosting Restart Parties? Have you learned more?

Not a lot, except I am old enough to remember when a new appliance came without a plug attached, so I could and still can wire a plug, but that’s about it! I haven’t learnt as much as I should have, but I now understand about PAT testing, and the need for special tools to get at the well-hidden screws that hamper repair. I enjoy hosting the events, organising the venue, refreshments, inviting the fixers, publicising the event, welcoming guests, taking photos and updating the Fixometer afterwards.

How did you go about getting started and finding volunteers?

We were really lucky that our local libraries are happy to let us have their community spaces free of charge to hold our events and that the West London Waste Authority has given us a tool kit to keep as long as we carry on hosting repair events. Our first event was part of a local week-long community festival, so there was plenty of publicity available which drew in both potential fixers and visitors with broken items. Several members of our Friends of the Earth group are also good fixers and we are lucky that well established fixers are happy to travel to our part of West London (as west as you can get, but still on the underground!).

Describe a really memorable moment at a Restart Party

A lady came to one of our events with a broken flat screen television. The fixer helped her to diagnose what part needed replacing and found where she could get this replacement part. She followed this through and came back to our next event with the part and immediately spotted the same fixer was there. Within 30 minutes the TV was repaired with the help of the fixer she had seen previously. A happy ending all round.

Share something cool with us [preferably a link]

I still have a Nokia 3410, which works perfectly. It has just had its second replacement battery. I inherited it from my son who had it as a teenager. He is now 31!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udfPYNWo8Ks

Today we launch a new petition to the UK government, BEIS and Defra ministers calling for real Right to Repair rules. The government claimed way too much credit in the media for doing what it was required to do. We know the score, and we are deeply committed to better.

The petition asks for three simple things.

1. any “Right to Repair” measure includes everyone, including DIY-ers and repair cafes
2. a commitment to keeping up with Europe or doing better — more products
3. reduction on VAT for repairs

Sign the petition

(If you can’t see the button above, find the petition here.)

Why now?

Earlier this year, the UK government largely ignored calls by Parliament to address electronic waste through the Right to Repair. It’s showing very little commitment to longer-lasting products.

In recent weeks, a BBC Radio 4 series called Dare to Repair gave the issue great coverage. The show pointed out that even manufacturers would support lowering VAT on repairs.

If you’d like even more background, we wrote an explainer for you.

Calling all community repair groups and allies

We’re calling on allies, Repair Cafés, signers and endorsers of the Manchester Declaration to email this petition widely. It’s relevant to  consumer rights, market competition, taxation, job creation. But also the environment and a green recovery.

We will post updates on the petition page, and present the results to government when the time is right.

Printers can be frustrating – easy to break and hard to fix. And we see them frequently at Restart Parties. We still remember someone cycling for more than 5 miles with their printer to take it to our very first event.

Today in celebration of Earth Day, we are launching “PrintCat”, a fun opportunity for everyone to get involved in analysing data on over 800 broken printers. The data is from our own Restart Parties, as well as from Repair Cafes and Fixit Clinics around the world, collected together with our partners of the Open Repair Alliance.

We want to understand why printers fail, so that we can tell policymakers how future models can be made easier to repair. Repair reduces waste and lessens the strain on our planet’s resources.

How you can get involved

Head over to PrintCat and join the investigation. You’ll be presented with information about a broken printer and you’ll be able to select the most appropriate fault from a comprehensive list. Once you’ve selected an option, you’ll be presented with information on another printer. The more printer faults you can categorise, the more we learn! PrintCat shows each printer to three people to help confirm the right category. If you want to learn more, you can join a conversation about it here.

Try PrintCat

Why printers, and why now 

Until now, there’s not been any regulation on printers’ repairability, neither in the UK, nor in Europe. Since 2012, printer manufacturers have had a “voluntary agreement” at EU-level, aiming to “reduce the environmental footprint” of printers, and exempting them from formal regulation. Manufacturers are currently discussing a new version of the agreement, and the draft version we’ve seen is extremely weak on repair. If approved, manufacturers would not commit to make spare parts available for printers priced below €350. And we are not aware of any separate agreement for the UK at this stage.

What we hope to achieve

Most printers brought to community repair events are indeed priced below £300 or €350. So we thought it would be worth exploring why they fail, and whether manufacturers’ proposal is fair. The European Commission could reject the voluntary agreement proposed by the industry, and decide to develop regulations on printers. We hope our findings will help make the case for more ambitious measures tackling repairability of printers.

And we also hope many people will enjoy contributing to PrintCat and learning more about why printers fail. PrintCat is the first in a series of three microtasks we’re running as part of our participation in the ACTION accelerator, engaging citizen scientists with open data. Over the next few months, there will be more opportunities to analyse data collected at repair events – so if you enjoy PrintCat, stay in touch for more!

We are hugely grateful to to The ACTION (Participatory science toolkit against pollution) project for funding this work and for their support.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824603. This blog post reflects the author’s views. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Recently the UK government announced that from this summer we will have a “new legal right to repair” washing machines, dishwashers, fridges and TVs – as “manufacturers will be legally obliged to make spare parts for products available to consumers for the first time”.

The announcement is quite bold, claiming that the move is expected to extend the lifespan of products “by up to 10 years”. It generated a lot of enthusiasm in the press and on social media, despite being an expected announcement bringing Great Britain in line with new European Union regulations – agreed before the UK’s departure from the EU – and already applicable in Northern Ireland from March 1st.

For the first time, policymakers write into law design for repairability, long-term availability of spare parts and repair information, creating a precedent. But we don’t think there’s that much to celebrate yet – here is why.

1. Only a few products covered – not smartphones or laptops

The announced regulations only tackle a few product categories, while in the EU work is already ongoing in preparing to bring repairability requirements to products such as smartphones, tablets and laptops. Despite Defra and Beis launching a study to inform future product policy for the UK, it is concerning that there is no commitment to at least meet – if not exceed – the range of products that will be covered by repair regulation at European level. This is one area where the EU is ahead, and we would like to see a clear commitment by the UK government going forward.

2. We’re not guaranteed access to spare parts

We submitted feedback to a draft of these regulations, and noted that – just like the EU ones – they gives access to a wide range of spare parts to professional repairers, not to consumers and to community repair initiatives. To give an example, the only spare parts the law requires manufacturers to provide for TVs: external power supplies and remote controls. Some manufacturers might do more than that, but not because of the regulation. This is indeed a missed opportunity, as it might reduce the range of repairs actually performed. Also, the regulation will only apply to new products released on the market from now on. It won’t increase access to spare parts or repair manuals for products already in operation.

If the UK is serious about doing better than Europe, it can simply extend access to spare parts to all, not just professionals.

3. These regulations don’t tackle the high cost of repairs

Design for repairability in new products will hopefully reduce the amount of time needed to disassemble products to complete a repair. However the regulation doesn’t tackle two key problems:

1. it doesn’t put any capping to the price of spare parts and
2. it allows “bundling” of spare parts – the practice that allows manufacturers to design washing machines with sealed drums, requiring a prohibitively costly repair in case just an inexpensive ball bearing fails

Talking to professional repairers (for example Brixton’s Spin Doctor) we’ve learned that such barriers are among the most common pushing people to replace rather than repair their appliances.

What’s more, a Parliamentary inquiry on e-waste last year asked the UK government to encourage repairs by reducing VAT charged on the repair of electrical and electronic products. But in its response in February, the government dismissed this option.

Cost is the difference between theoretical repairability and an actual repaired product. We need fiscal incentives which can help consumers choose repair, prevent waste and support a green repair economy.

Better information at the point of purchase in the UK

The new “right to repair” measures do not always help us make better decisions at purchase, which is why repairability scoring is crucial.

France launched in January its repair score index, helping inform consumers about a product’s repairability at the point of purchase. France demonstrated it’s possible to create a tool independently from the EU (slow) action on this. The system isn’t perfect. But it’s already pushing manufacturers to admit how complicated disassembly of their products is. As well as pushing them to become more transparent about support they provide to the products on the market. And in some cases it appears to cause manufacturers to make repair information publicly available to improve their scores.

Can the UK government learn from the French model, and bring it to all UK consumers? More information about how repairable a product is would bring us a lot closer to an actual right to repair.

To keep up to date on Right to Repair, subscribe to our monthly newsletter and occasional policy updates:

This post originally appeared on “Fix It Workshop“, the blog of Matt Marchant, who repairs in his home workshop in Worthing, in the UK. We’re going to republish some of our favourites of Marchant’s work. This one is about a British classic in the kitchen.

Believe it or not, people do ask me which is best: New or old machines?

There is of course, no right or wrong answer and the answer will vary, depending on the product and application.

But since the question comes up from time-to-time, I thought I’d give my opinion on the matter and have a bit of fun with the subject, a kind of “shoot-out” if you will.

My illustration focuses on an old favourite of mine; the Kenwood Chef. My chosen opponents are a model from the early 1980s, the ubiquitous A901 Chef, made in England, and the much later 2000s KMC010 Chef, made in China.

The Chef is a good example for the shoot-out as the machine’s purpose hasn’t changed since it’s introduction to kitchens in the 1950s. Many Chef accessories produced over the years are interchangeable, owning to the foresight of good design.

Some people think that new machines are best and more capable while other people think older machines are best as they were built to last. Since I’ve dismantled, used and admired 100s of these machines, here’s my take.

Round 1 – Performance

Older Chefs are less powerful than newer machines. For example, the A901 has a 450W motor, whereas the later KMC010 has a much more powerful 1400W motor. This means than the newer machine will be more capable to mix more stodgy mixtures for longer. Counter-intuitively, the more powerful machine may be more efficient for some loads, compared to the lower power one, although I’ve never measured this.

A901 – 0 KMC010 – 1

Round 2 – Noise (from the machine)

Kenwood has tended to favour evolution rather than revolution with their product progression. Many models available over the years appeared not to change much on the surface, but under the skin, small tweaks and improvements were taking place. So, in general, the newer the machine, the quieter they tend to be. There are some model variant exceptions to this, but the KMC010 is much quieter than my own good condition A901.

A901 – 0 KMC010 – 2

Oh dear, new things might be better after all..?

Round 3 – Durability

Now this is where things get interesting. Many of the machines I receive in my workshop for repair are getting on a bit. Some of them are over 40 years old. The machines have served their families well with faithful service.

Faulty older machines can often be turned around within a few hours in the workshop, to be back with the customer, to make more cakes. The A901 Chef is a tough old beast. The materials and finish rarely give any problems and major components rarely fail it seems.

KMC010 Chefs (and all newer models) that I see in the workshop are obviously much younger than the A901s. While very capable and powerful, sadly, they seem to have failed, often only with occasional light use.

Seemingly, it’s true what they say, the older machines were built to last and I base that purely on customer enquiries and items I see to repair every week. The newer machines often have features and buttons that don’t serve any real advantage, but have associated circuits which can and do go wrong, rendering the whole machine useless, if they fail.

A901 – 1 KMC010 – 2

Round 4 – Repairability

Now obviously, I am ‘repairability-biased’, this is a blog about repair after all. However, the facts speak for themselves. Older Chefs can be repaired with basic tools, reasonably priced components and a little know-how.

Newer Chefs, like the KMC010 are more complicated and have less user-serviceable parts. This makes otherwise serviceable machines far more likely to end up in the scrapyard with seemingly minor faults, that were too hard to diagnose and repair. The A901 wins hands down in the repairability stakes.

A901 – 2 KMC010 – 2

The feeling is tense and there’s an air of excitement as I get to call the decider on this slightly odd dual.

Round 5 – Value for money (the decider)

A new KMC010 Titanium costs over £600 today and it should be said that all Chefs are great machines and a worthy addition to any kitchen. However, a decent second-hand Chef from the 1960s to the early 1990s is a worthy contender for a tenth of the cost.

Have a look on eBay and you’ll see A701s, A701a, A901, A901E, KM200 model Chefs, starting at £40, often with many accessories. They’re just as useful and capable to serve most home needs. Indeed, I have a customer who uses her standard A901 in an industrial kitchen, every day, with no problems.

A901 – 3 KMC010 -2

The non-scientific conclusion…

Buy an older machine and take satisfaction that it will last generations, can be easily repaired and work with most accessories available now. Buying an older machine is probably less environmentally damaging than the manufacture of a new machine.

Buy a new machine and take satisfaction with additional performance and a manufacturers’ guarantee for the first year…

You know which machine I would buy…

While we haven’t been able to repair together, we’re hard at work on a new project to explore our repair data and our environmental impact. We’re happy to announce the support of the ACTION (Participatory science toolkit against pollution), helping us incorporate a “citizen science” approach.

Around 80% of a small electronic device’s carbon footprint is emitted before it even reaches European shores. What if we can’t use stuff for longer by fixing it? What if these products are impossible to repair by design? And crucially, what are the real environmental impacts? We’d like to explore this together with our repair community, and engage the wider public.

Learning together about our environmental impact

We calculate the positive impact of repairs made at events using a spreadsheet of environmental product reports compiled in 2014. Since then, we did a refresh of mobiles and tablets but now it’s time to refresh the whole lot. Things have changed in the last 6 years and it is time to address the following:

• Products in certain categories changed significantly since the data was last updated
• Some types of products we see at events aren’t represented in the LCA data, such as IoT devices and sewing machines
• The data quality for many product categories was already fairly low
• Our fundamental assumption about the carbon impact of a repair might benefit from new research

So we’ve mobilised a team of volunteers who have really made a deep dive into new available data. We’re uncovering much more detail for some kinds of products, and a real lack of data for other kinds of products. Join us! And if you are curious, check back in May for the results of this work.

Our new data workbench

The repair data we all collect at our community repair events can be incredibly powerful. Not only can we use it to measure our environmental impact but also to advocate for more repairable products and pro-repair policies. By analysing the data we all record, we learn more about why products break and how companies could make them easier to fix.

Over the past year, we mobilised volunteers to help us analyse the data we collect. Now we’re ready to formalise this and add this work as a permanent feature of our community software Restarters.net.

The Data Workbench lets you dive into the repair data collected by the whole network though a series of simple microtask activities. We design each microtask to investigate one specific aspect of repair or a particular type of device.

For example, our MiscCat microtask focused on putting devices seen at repair events into categories. Our MobiFix microtask investigated why smartphones break.

While some experience with repair is often helpful, you don’t need to be an expert to get involved.

We’re also working closely with partners in the Open Repair Alliance to include them and their data in these activities.

The end goal: more informed consumers and better policies

Our project addresses the global dimensions of pollution and consumerism, the impacts of our take-make-throw economy. Many imported goods have really short lifespans, which we try to extend at our community repair events. 

Manufacturers calculate and occasionally share the carbon impacts of their own products, as well as expected product lifetime. The insurance industry sometimes shares data on real product lifetimes, and academics or think tanks model this. But nobody has ever tried to take actual data generated by citizens at community repair events and learn from it.

We will disseminate the results of our work through the repair movement, and beyond, and use our data as evidence to influence product standards for more repairable products.

About ACTION

The ACTION (Participatory science toolkit against pollution) project is co-funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 framework. ACTION co-designs methodologies, tools and guidelines to open the scientific process to new groups and communities, making citizen science more participatory, inclusive, citizen-led and democratic.

In time for half-term here in the UK, we’re launching an online experience for 8-12 year olds (and anybody older too!) that allows people to dive into the full lifecycle of the device we spend so much time on.

Materials Matter is an educational site allowing you to explore the life of your smartphone.

Your phone is with you for a few years of your life. But it has already experienced a lot before it reaches you. And after you stop using it, your phone’s story is far from over. Join us to explore the secret life of your phone!

The lifecycle of your phone has big impacts on the planet. Your phone contains raw materials – the minerals and metals inside. But where do these raw materials come from? And what happens when you recycle your phone?

We developed this website with support from EIT Raw Materials together with partners of the Replay Project, including a number of museums across Europe.

Original artwork is by Rod Hunt (©), animation and development by John Rowley.

Version for museums

In addition to the site optimised for tablets and computers, we’ve created a version for use in museums. We hope that when partner museums — Heureka (Vantaa, Finland), Muse (Trento, Italy), and Museon (The Hague, Netherlands) — reopen they are able engage visitors with the experience on bigger screens. We’ve created a special version of the experience for museum use: please get in touch if you’d like to learn more for your museum.

Opportunities for classrooms

In past, we’ve led educational activities using these materials and we have ideas about how we can bring this online experience to a classroom setting. Educators, please get in touch if you’d like to invite us into your classroom (remotely).

What a tumultuous start to this year! In this post, we’re going to highlight some key moments in the long month of January and help break down the big questions and opportunities in the push for longer-lasting and more repairable products in the UK this year.

Big changes in January

When lockdown hit, repair businesses were FINALLY acknowledged as essential for the first time. (In previous lockdowns, repair businesses were forced to only operate pick-up and drop off services, or through the post.)

However, some repair businesses have been hit really hard by all of the new Brexit delays and costs to importing spare parts. One white goods parts business is reporting that people are opting to buy new appliances as it’s simply quicker than waiting for repairs. This could mean a net loss of UK jobs, as almost no household appliances or electronics are manufactured in the UK, as well as added costs for consumers and big consequences for the planet.

The other big news this month was a surge in public interest in laptop donation, to help get kids online during school closures. Ofcom estimates up to 1.8 million children in the UK do not have adequate access to a computer and the internet. The government simply hasn’t solved the problem. The BBC and other media drew attention to a potential solution: reusing dusty and dormant laptops in cupboards.

Donations flooded into local reuse projects across the country — and our page listing these drew huge traffic to our site. We’ve been networking with groups across London and around the UK.

From the perspective of changing the system and changing the way we live, this is a potentially transformative moment.

This is the first time people have connected the digital access/equity agenda with the environmental agenda. People are showing genuine interest in reuse over recycling. And they are looking for local solutions, ones that share skills and connect people in their community.

We’ve been contacted by waste authorities in London to see if we can work together to intercept functioning laptops from waste. But real change can only happen here if we can sustain public concern on the issue, as we’ve seen with child hunger.

In the eleven months that remain, here are the top 5 big, immediate policy questions we are facing this year at a national level.

1. Will the government accept Parliament’s recommendations to reduce e-waste?

Looking to the rest of the year, the first thing on our agenda is getting a response from the UK government on the excellent report on electronic waste published in November by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee.

Normally the government responds within two months. That window has passed.

The government needs to accept or reject the Committee’s suggestions, which include a Right to Repair enshrined in law. Accepting the suggestions would prove they are serious about these issues, and would really be the only way they could continue to say that we are going to be “better” than Europe.

2. Brexit: do we get more than “non-regression” on the Right to Repair?

In the last two days of January we heard two mentions in Parliament of “planned obsolescence” and concern over reduced product lifetimes. (Lords and Commons.) We think this is positive. Scrutiny is good. However media coverage and even Parliamentarians conveniently side-step the fact that Europe has been the driving force behind Right to Repair and product standards. Is the UK is really going to better than Europe on product standards and the Right to Repair? If so, how?

We’re not qualified to really understand the complex agreement between the UK and the Europe, nor can we predict the future. What we do know for certain at this moment is that we are guaranteed “non-regression”, which means we only get the first of Europe’s groundbreaking Right to Repair measures covering fridges, televisions, dishwashers and washing machines. However, the final UK regulation for these products still hasn’t been published. What’s the hold up?

We know this year Europe has ambitions to widen the scope of these measures to include other crucial product categories, like computers and mobiles. Will the UK follow suit?

Even the tech industry itself wants the UK to remain in alignment with Europe.

But Brexiters politicised product standards from the beginning and we don’t know if the UK government will want to be seen to have a strong commitment to remain aligned. Last September we responded to an initial consultation on the future of “ecodesign”, which is the European home of “right to repair”. And we know Defra and BEIS have since commissioned a study to inform future priorities. The media reports that we are due for announcements in the spring. But to date we have no certainty about the government’s future level of ambition on this.

3. What about those innovative new ideas?

We have a good memory around here. We still remember the proposal from Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) last year that manufacturers of connected devices be forced to state the length of software support and updates. This could be really groundbreaking. It sounds like the measures are being drafted up now, and we could see this implemented in 2021. As ever, the devil is in the details. How will this be enforced? (And when can this be extended to all “connected” products, IT and mobiles?)

The government made much fanfare about it abolishing the “tampon tax” and insinuating that this would never have been possible in Europe. (Not entirely true.) But freedom to make easy changes to VAT is a good opportunity.

So how about zero-rated VAT for repairs on household appliances and electronics? If the super rich can get zero-rated repairs on their yachts, why can’t we get a break on our repairs at home?

4. What is the role of UK competition regulators?

We submitted feedback the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) Annual Plan for the first time, drawing their attention to how the Right to Repair is a competition issue that bridges both digital markets and a low-carbon future. These are two of their stated priorities in this post-Brexit era. We wrote:

This is a largely unexplored area in competition and consumer policy and there are many potential angles to this. Improving the longevity of products is clearly in the consumer interest. Consumers will often not be aware of the costs of repairs that they may incur and reducing the longevity of products will tend to benefit all manufacturers, but particularly those with market power. We consider that the CMA is the best placed institution to improve consumer outcomes in this area.

5. Will COP26 address consumption emissions?

Lastly, we honestly do not know what to expect from the UN Climate Change negotiations in Glasgow later this year. But this is a big opportunity for action on consumption emissions. National carbon accounting methods leave us off the hook for the carbon emitted in the production of stuff we import. The narrative “the UK’s carbon footprint is dropping” doesn’t just lull us into complacency, it is fundamentally unfair to the countries who have our carbon on their books. The only way forward is to cut our consumption emissions by consuming less while simultaneously supporting mitigation in countries that produce the stuff we import.

If we can keep up the pressure, 2021 could just be a good year for our Right to Repair in the UK. To keep up to date on all five of these questions and much more, subscribe to our monthly newsletter and occasional Right to Repair updates:

Today we’re launching a campaign in London to mobilise donations of laptops, cash, and contributions of volunteers’ skills so that unused laptops can be transformed into laptops for students and people in need. Ofcom estimates that up to 1.8 million school children, many currently at home with lockdown, do not have adequate access to a computer and the internet.

Visit our London campaign page to find out where in your London borough you donate laptops and cash.

Visit the campaign

Damian Griffiths at our partner organisation Catbytes CIC, in Lewisham, says

“The response has been great but there are currently still thousands of children in Lewisham doing their homework on smartphones. We desperately need donated laptops so we can wipe them, refurbish them, and distribute them to the schools that are requesting them from us.”

Support Restart’s crowdfunder

Supporters of The Restart Project are encouraged to donate to our own crowdfunding campaign, which will help us mobilise our volunteers to help supercharge computer reuse efforts across London.

Donate

One of the barriers to turning around laptops more quickly is simply volunteer power. To supercharge their efforts at a community level, The Restart Project is mobilising its repair volunteers to help with the most challenging laptops. Our Restarters have shared their skills in years of community Restart Parties, events which are now on hold because of the pandemic. 

Last year we worked with community reuse projects, and in the coming months we can still work closely together, despite the challenges, to increase the number of students who have access to laptops. 

Now, we’re creating a virtual help-desk where community projects can allocate challenging repairs to Restart’s home-based volunteers. Where possible, we will use pedal-powered couriers to move hardware.

From our perspective, this is also an important moment for our efforts to promote a better relationship with electronics. The public is realising that the dusty laptop in their cupboard is valuable and can have a second life. Many older laptops and PCs can be upgraded with little effort or investment, and/or given a second life with a new operating system.

Our goal is to repair and ready 240 laptops for use by students in need, and to donate any funds not used for spare parts or transport to reuse organisations in our London network.

Thanks to London Waste and Recycling Board for helping us get out the word and supporting our efforts in London.

Here’s a story of a simple DIY repair that nearly did not happen.

Why does this small story about a soup maker matter? Because we focus on a product made by French manufacturers Tefal, who a couple of years ago made great fanfare about the repairability of its products. And specifically, long-term access to spare parts.

In its loud public commitments, Tefal sounded great. But in practice, a qualified electrician had to pressure the company to gain access to a very uncomplicated spare part.

This is a tale of why voluntary commitments by manufacturers are simply not enough, and why enforceable product standards requiring access to spare parts are needed. And we would argue not just for professional repairers, but DIYers like Ray who had all of the skills required.

Ray, his soup maker and the manufacturers

On its website Tefal claims to be “committed to keeping for 10 years on average after purchase all technical parts for virtually all products marketed since 2012”. However, upon scrutiny they are quite vague about what access consumers will have to these parts.

Qualified electrician Ray contacted us on our online community when he spotted our questions about what Tefal’s policies would be like in practice.

He wrote on our community

OK I purchased a Tefal soup maker approximately 3 years ago. The same model BL841140 is still for sale on their own site. One of the main reasons for purchasing was their policy of making sure that the products would be backed up with a repairability for 10 years…

But now it has failed. The part I need is a small plug socket on top of the handle that the top section plugs into. So I contacted their customer service. At first they told me it would have to go to one of their recommended repairers. After I told them that I am a certified electrician they sent me the parts diagram to pick the part I needed. So I did and they replied that the part was obsolete.

So I went through the promise they have given with the 10 year back up. At which they replied that they would give a 20% reduction on a replacement [product]. Which I think is a absolute insult and I told them so.

We’ve seen Ray’s actual correspondence with Tefal and a couple of things struck us about their tactics.

At first, they provided him only one option — their own repair. (This is no different than the vast majority of manufacturers.)

This is not a part we can give out to consumers.

Then, when he then told him he was a qualified electrician, they told him the part was no longer available and tried to sell him a new product at a discount. (This is also a common practice.)

The part is obsolete and no longer available.

This turned out to be a lie, because after further pressure and threats to make formal complaints, they agreed to provide the part. Ray says “as if by magic” the part appeared.

Our recourse in this case

In thinking of how to respond to Ray’s case before Tefal relented, we thought we really only had two options:

1. Name and shame — either via a tech journalist or via a consumer rights organisation or media outlet.
2. Pursue legal action in relation to advertising standards. Here the best outcome would be a  referral to Trading Standards.

But in reflecting on both options, is either a good use of our time as concerned consumers and citizens? Both seem to place us into an infinite whack-a-mole scenario. Think of the thousands of companies adopting similar confusing policies in relation to repair. These problems are endemic in the industry.

The Right to Repair — not voluntary initiative by manufacturers

Ray’s soup maker is a perfect case study in why, as a UK Parliamentary Committee recently stated, “the right to repair must be enshrined in law”.

Other manufacturers, not just Tefal, make noise about their expanded repair offerings: larger authorised repair networks or extremely controlled offers of spare parts to independent repair shops.

Ultimately, they are trying to undermine a global move towards binding standards which guarantee access to spare parts, repair documentation and tools, and repairable design.

Europe has so far only extended Right to Repair to “professional” repairers — and in many member states, manufacturers will still be able to condition access to these professionals. Will the process be straight forward? Or will the goalposts move, as they did for Ray?

And why shouldn’t talented DIYers — for example qualified electricians — be able to fix their kitchen appliances?

These are all important questions for us to address as we push for a Right to Repair enshrined in law, not one merely published on a website by manufacturers to look good.

Over a year after its inquiry started, the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) released its report on electronic waste. The report is a very strong statement in favour of longer-lasting products, consumer rights and a smarter approach to materials and electronics waste. It offers a clear roadmap for the UK government to follow.

The timing could not be better, on the eve of “Black Friday”, Brexit and following a year that the UK fell way short of its e-waste collection targets. In the UK we are the second highest producers of electronic waste per capita – in the world.

Through the inquiry, the Committee impressed us with their understanding of the need to look higher up the waste hierarchy. They clearly believe extending product lifetimes and reuse are an important part of the picture of combatting electronic waste.

We submitted written and oral evidence. And we can hear the voices of the repair community in the Committee’s final report – literally, as they shared results of a survey of 500 community repair volunteers in the UK.

The Parliamentary committee report’s main conclusions

The Committee echoes many of the Europe’s own ambitions in making repair and reuse more accessible to people, and the need for regulation to make it happen.

But the Committee is clearer, and even goes further, in a couple of key areas:

• Asking for Right to Repair to be enshrined in law, including affordable spare parts and access to software tools used for repairs
• Emphasising the need for manufacturers to commit to consumers on length of software support
• Suggesting reducing VAT for repairs

On collecting electronic waste, the committee showed an interest in improving the system:

• Stating that online retailers must be obliged to collect small e-waste
• Pushing for reuse to be counted towards e-waste collection targets
• Suggesting a massive shift away from weight as the key metric in e-waste collection

Swift action needed to do “better than Europe”

We’ve stated that we need to either remain aligned with Europe on the Right to Repair or do better. It appears the government’s current position is to remain aligned with Europe at the moment of Brexit, which means we will get a basic right to repair for certain appliances.

But we may not benefit from the new measures Europe is working on next year, including mobiles and other products.

In terms of doing better than Europe, well, the EAC has outlined some of what it looks like.

And we would like to see its version of Right to Repair extended to all people, not just the professional repairers that manufacturers recognise only on their terms. Shouldn’t a qualified electrician be able to repair his or her blender? Shouldn’t a talented DIY-er be able to change their own mobile battery?

We would like to see zero VAT for repair of certain products with short lives, high environmental impacts and where labour costs are significant. If yacht repairs are rated at zero, why not mobile repairs or television repairs?

We discussed all of the above on a recent podcast with Green Alliance.

This year, having access to functioning technology has become more important than ever. Community groups across the country are running donations schemes to collect laptops and other electronic devices and pass them on those who need them – we are listing them.

Helping out Catbytes in Lewisham

But not all donations that these schemes receive can be passed on after a mere wipe of data — some need a little more TLC. Fortunately, as Restarters that’s right up our alley. So while we’re not holding public events in London, we put our skills to use in another way.

We partnered with Catbytes CIC, an organisation based in Lewisham, South London. While Catbytes usually runs tech clubs and helps small organisations and community centres with their websites and IT infrastructure, the pandemic turned their interest towards hardware. Since the spring, Catbytes has collected donations of unwanted devices which they pass on to local residents.

This helps them stay on track with their education, connect with loved ones or do necessities like ordering groceries.

Fixing donated laptops

On two afternoons in October, our volunteers joined us at Catbytes. We were able to use a community hall, which gave us enough room for six fixing tables. After a round of introductions and a quick briefing on our Covid safety regulations, the volunteers were eager to get started.

Among the non-functional laptops, there was something for every skill set: from loose connections and overheating devices to problems with the operating systems — everyone could contribute. Social distancing didn’t stop us from helping each other with the repairs either. Questions and advice were shared through the room, along with jokes and stories. Everyone clearly enjoyed being back at a fixing event

“It felt great to be back in a communal fixing environment – sharing knowledge and humour with like minded Restarters again!” – Jamie, volunteer

After the two sessions, we fixed more than 10 laptops. These devices will now go out to local residents.

“It was great to see the Restart volunteers getting busy with their screwdrivers and soldering irons. They fixed a lot of laptops, and wrote really good reports on all the laptops they looked at. From my interaction with them I could see that they really felt the value of what we are doing. This made it a great collaboration. There are children in Lewisham now doing homework on laptops fixed by Restart.” – Damian, founder of Catbytes CIC

We’re getting organised for more collaboration with London community reuse projects in the New Year, if conditions allow.

Are you running a similar project in your community? Let us know, we’d love to hear about it.

“Repair is Essential” – this is the theme we chose for this year’s International Repair Day. It is essential for repair businesses who have been hard hit by the lockdown and by Covid. It is essential for people who rely on functioning electronics more than ever, at a time when repair is increasingly difficult. And it is essential for communities, who come together in the spirit of fixing and sharing knowledge.

During this year’s Repair Day, we celebrated all these aspects. And we were happy to get some coverage from Huffington Post UK and Times Radio.

In London

This year, Repair Day fell on the last day of the first-ever “Repair Week” promoted by London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB). The week mobilised businesses, community groups and local authorities. We are proud to have inspired London with our previous editions of Repair Day.

For our own contribution we brought our community together to expand our Repair Directory, where we currently list over 120 reliable repair businesses in 12 boroughs. Online, a team of volunteers mapped repair businesses in London to be considered for inclusion. This group listed 45+ businesses, which we’re currently vetting – many will soon get listed in the Directory.

And we also met in person. In Tooting, Crystal Palace and Shepherds Bush, small groups went on walks and explored the local high streets. It was great to meet passionate repairer professionals and to speak to them about their business and their experience. Repair Day in London was the culmination of the very first Repair Week, an initiative which we’re proud to have inspired. We look forward to see them both grow next year.

Across the UK

Also other cities reached out to repair businesses: Brighton Repair Cafe and Bedford Repair Cafe are collecting information about repair shops in their cities. If you know about a local repair business – let them know!

In some places groups managed to host Covid-safe repair events, like in Bath, Market Harborough and Rugby. Some groups like Reading hosted online events or took part in Fixit Clinic’s “Intergalactic” repair event online. Sadly, repairing together and sharing our skills in person like we used to has become more difficult this year. But we will be back, as soon as it’s safe to!

Repair Cafe Glasgow captures the spirit we all feel these days:

https://twitter.com/repairglasgow/status/1317474377315848194

And until we can meet you at events again, we continue to spread the word online and to repair from our own homes.

We enjoyed the post by North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue, reminding us of essential repairs on their fire engines, year round.

https://twitter.com/WYFRS/status/1317485532939800576

Here at The Restart Project, our primary mission is to fix our relationship with electronics. Through community repair events, we help people learn how to repair their broken electronics. By bringing people together to share skills and gain the confidence to open up their stuff, we give people a hands-on way of making a difference, as well as a way to talk about the wider issue of what kind of products we want.

Eight years ago, we built the first version of the “Fixometer”, a tool designed to help quantify the environmental and social impact of repair events. The repair data and stories it collects is helping us demand better, more sustainable electronics for all.

But while our focus is primarily on electronic and electrical devices, we’re proud to work closely with many local Repair Cafés and other community groups who also help people repair clothes, bicycles, furniture and other non-electrical products.

We’ve been inspired by how community repair groups have been using repair data to further their work in powerful ways. But over the last couple of years, it’s become clear that the focus on electrical and electronic devices has presented barriers to many of these groups and prevented others from using it in the first place.

So, after more than a year of surveys, interviews with group organsiers and repairers, design and development work, we’re delighted to announce that we’ve now added support for non-electrical/electronic items!

How does it work?

The Fixometer is the engine behind our community platform, Restarters.net. If you’re already registered, you’ll notice that we’ve reorganised event pages to better highlight your environmental impact stats and add a new tab for ‘unpowered’ items to the table of items you see at events:

A look at the new event page, showing event stats and items seen

Adding an unpowered item is as easy as clicking a button at the bottom and filling out a handful of fields about the item you’ve tried to fix:

Adding an unpowered item to the Fixometer

The form currently has categories for furniture, bicycles, clothing/textiles and miscellaneous. As with powered items, you are also able to record the weight and age of each item as well as lots of information about the repair itself, successful or not. If you enter a weight measurement for these items, the tool will automatically add that to your event’s environmental impact stats.

However, while for powered devices the tool is able to automatically calculate the CO2 and amount of waste diverted by successful repairs, for unpowered items, only the weight of items is included in event stats (where you input the weight yourself). This is because we don’t yet have a data model or reference data for unpowered items.

If you’re interested in helping us expand our environmental impact calculations for unpowered items, we’re working on this now and need your help! Learn more here.

Over the next couple of months, we’ll also be updating other areas of the site to reflect the fact that many of you will be collecting data for unpowered items.

We are incredibly excited to introduce this update and are grateful to all of you who requested this feature and gave us feedback throughout the process of putting it together.

If you haven’t signed up to our community platform, there’s no better time than now to connect with others passionate about community repair and calculate the impact of your own repair events.

Sign up here

On Saturday 17th October we’ll celebrate the fourth edition of International Repair Day. This year’s theme is “repair is essential” – especially during a global pandemic. So we want to celebrate the skills and work of all people who repair, whether they do so in their spare time as volunteers, or as their main activity as professional repairers.

Our event for International Repair Day

Normally on Repair Day we run a large Restart Party, to celebrate the day together with as many of our volunteers as possible.

This year unfortunately we can’t, for obvious reasons. We have decided to mark the day with a hybrid online/in person event. On 17 October from 1pm we invite Londoners to help us celebrate the independent repair businesses who help us all stay connected, especially during lockdown. We are currently inviting members of the public to suggest reliable local repair businesses to be featured in our Repair Directory. During the event, we’ll show the Directory works and then search for businesses together with participants.

We’ll do this online, but also in person. There will be opportunities for small groups to (safely!) get together for local walks to map their neighbourhood.

Sign up for our event

London’s first-ever Repair Week

We’re especially happy to announce that Repair Day this year is the culmination of London’s first-ever Repair Week. Repair Week is organised by the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB), and it brings together almost 50 organisations, including charities, local authorities and businesses, to celebrate the importance of repair. From October 12-17, London Repair Week will feature a  mix of online discussions, repair activities for electronics and other products, and promotions from commercial repairers. The full programme will be published on the Repair week’s website. As part of the initiative, we will take part in a webinar on Friday October 16th on “Circular IT and electricals: tackling the climate emergency through sustainable procurement”.

The role of cities in repair

At Restart, we strongly believe in the role that cities can play in pushing the repair agenda. We are proud to have inspired London with our previous editions of Repair Day. And we congratulate them for their plans to convene a week-long series of discussions and activities.

Last year we wrote an extensive report for LWARB to review its roadmap for the circular economy of electricals. One of our key recommendations was that London should invest in:

Celebrating and supporting the work of London’s huge range of community organisations, vibrant charity retail and re-use organisations, as well as commercial repairers and startups working on electricals.

Repair Week is a first important step in this direction. We hope it will be followed by more opportunities for collaboration between public, private and third sector. In other cities across Europe, repair networks are bringing together repair professionals, and funding is made available to directly incentivise repair over replacing products. The example of Austria’s capital Vienna is very inspiring.

But for now, let’s make the most of Repair Week and of International Repair Day!

We cover 12 London boroughs with our Repair Directory. That’s about one third of the Greater London.

This means that in many parts of London, the map looks very empty. Now is the time to change that! We know there are many more brilliant repair businesses out there – and that you know some of them. We’re opening the map for your submissions – for you to suggest your favourite local business and help us expand the coverage of the Repair Directory.

Before we publish, we will verify that the business meets our criteria for reliability:

• Have at least 10 online reviews, with a minimum average score of 4 out of 5 stars
• Provide a physical address
• Give warranties on their repairs

As soon as we have ten businesses in the pipeline, we will start adding them to the map. You can help us bring the map alive, and become a collaborative service for all Londoners.

Suggest a Business

A change in direction

This marks an exciting new phase for the Repair Directory. Previously, we researched suitable businesses ourselves in specific parts of London. But this approach meant that many London boroughs were not yet mapped. Local residents didn’t have a way of using the app to find reliable repairers nearby, and businesses didn’t get the chance to introduce themselves.

Now we are counting on the help and expertise of our London community. By allowing everyone to suggest repair businesses, we will be able to start populating the map across the whole of London, and to make it more useful to everyone.

Our goal is to produce comprehensive and up-to-date listings covering all boroughs. For this to happen, we seek partnerships and financial support from waste authorities, local authorities and others across London. If your organisation can support this project, please get in touch.

Repair is essential

For years we have worked to strengthen our relationships with London’s professional repairers. They are a fundamental pillar in the repair ecosystem and a place where innovative, environmentally friendly services help people in need. These businesses have been even more essential over the past months where we all relied on technology even more than usual.

But the repair sector faced new challenges during lockdown, when in the UK it wasn’t considered “essential”. A lack of guidance meant that businesses had to navigate the pandemic with its new regulations by themselves. Many repairers persisted and implemented new and creative ways of working – providing an essential service to us all.

So with the Repair Directory we are hoping to give back to these businesses. And you can do the same! Find a local repairer to get help with your broken device or appliance. You will support a small business and give your products a new lease of life!

Try the Directory

The need for electronic devices is high

The last few months have shown us how much we rely on our electronic devices. From socializing to getting an education – many activities moved online.

This shift has also highlighted how unequally distributed access to technology is: A poll revealed that 88% of teachers know of students who don’t have access to the internet or devices to participate in online learning. These teachers fear that a large number of students will be left behind. The government set out to distribute laptops to students. But only care leavers, those with a social worker and disadvantaged pupils in year 10 were eligible, leaving many others without access to a device.

This problem does not only affect students. Those shielding suddenly relied on electronic devices to stay connected and even for basic necessities such as ordering groceries. And with many libraries still being closed to the public, people who relied on the computers there now find it more difficult to apply for jobs or manage their benefits.

Across the UK, civil society has stepped up to help. Community groups and local organisations came together to start projects. They collect donations of electronics such as laptops and desktop computers, refurbish them and distribute them within their communities. We are listing these projects here. We hope to see this list grow, so please share it with your communities and let us know if there is a computer donation project near you!

Refurbishing laptops for London students

In London, several projects are currently active. In Hackney (East London), the Restarters of Hackney Fixers started to collect and refurbish donated laptops themselves. As skilled fixers of anything with a plug or battery, this work was right up their alley.

For this, they teamed up with Mer-IT. Mer-IT is a community initiative teaching young people how to repair computers themselves, thereby giving them confidence in their skills. They also offer traineeships for disadvantaged young people, training them to become IT technicians.

Hackney Fixers volunteers James and Dave visited Mer-IT in their hub at Mildmay Community Centre. With them they brought 17 donated laptops which they collected in the previous weeks. Their goal: Repair and refurbish these laptops, ready to be used by local students. James explained their progress in our community forum Restarters.net:

“4 of the laptops were sadly end of life. The other 13 needed various hardware fixes to bring them up to scratch including 4 new batteries, 2 new chargers, 2 UK charger cables, 1 memory upgrade, 1 coin battery, replacing missing screws, gluing down loose bits of trim, and relabelling two keyboards – luckily Mer-IT had a very useful label maker!”

These laptops will feed into the donation project of Hackney Council, which will distribute them to schools in the area. To meet their specifications, the refurbished laptops received a fresh install of Cloudready OS turning them into Chromebooks. Sadly, some devices proved to struggle with this install and will need more work done. Still, they succeeded with six of the laptops. This means that, thanks to James, Dave and the donors of the laptops, six pupils will now be able to follow their courses and access learning materials online.

James and Dave would like to thank Mer-IT, Mercedes and Alex, for the facilities, help, advice, company and support.

How you can help

Projects like this one show the important role repair groups play in their communities. The knowledge of volunteer fixers and their experience with getting older computers up and running again is extremely valuable for this. But also people without repair knowledge can help, for example by collecting donations or promoting a project to local partners and the media. There certainly is a role for everyone!

Has this inspired you to get more involved? Look at our list for a project near you or contact your nearest Restart group or Repair Cafe to start a similar initiative!

Do you have an unused laptop or computer at home? Here’s your friendly reminder that electronics are not like wine – they don’t get better with time. Even if your device worked fine when you stored it in that drawer ages ago, chances are that it’s not doing as well now. So it is better to donate these devices now while they work and can be reused. Not only will you save a device from landfill – you will also make a real difference in someone’s life!

Because some of us are definitely escaping this summer through books, we thought we’d publish an extended summer reading list.

In July, we shared some of our favourite reads on our radio show, with mini reviews by the Restart team. Here’s the full list we selected this summer.

Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World by Bruce Schneier

Schneier voices some of our worse – and previously most abstract – fears. As our world becomes increasingly connected and the Internet of Things grows, our lives as a whole become easier to hijack. Schneier does not just lay out all of the ways that our devices could be used against us in an attempt to fear monger. Rather, he sets out a path forward involving regulation and policy to adapt to this new way of life.

Get the book here. 

Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock

Costanza-Chock follows the design process from origin to output. The book examines how design traditions have developed, how they interact with the world around them, and their socio-historical effects. It’s a great reminder of the importance of considering design as a political act and becoming aware that most devices and objects are not necessarily designed with everyone in mind.

Get the book here. 

Driven: a White-Knuckled Ride to Heartbreak and Back by Melissa Stephenson

At a time when many of us are confined to our houses, Stephenson’s book captures the freedom of travel and movement that many of us are missing. Spurred on by a tragic life event, her book details her journey toward acceptance and understanding. Chronicled according to the many vehicles that she has driven and repaired throughout her life, she considers all of the events that got her to where she is.

Get the book here. 

Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine by Hannah Fry

Fry’s book focuses on the increasing prevalence of decision-making algorithms in our daily lives and aims to inform us on how these may be influencing and shaping our society in unseen ways. While this book is not anti-algorithm, it’s an integral examination of how bias is built into these systems, both knowingly and unknowingly – simultaneously mimicking and advancing dangerous societal power structures.

Get the book here. 

Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan

Currently, the public consciousness is overloaded with fears of apocalypse, be it environmental, political, or pandemic induced. In Infinite Detail, Maughan imagines a scenario just as contemporary and tells the story of society in crisis once the internet shuts down forever. Beginning the novel in a world that very much reflects our own in its utter dependency on the internet makes the consequences of this event much more real.

Get the book here. 

Lo-TEK, Design by Radical Indigenism by Julia Watson

The book focuses on how we can learn from indigenous approaches to design in order to develop more sustainable infrastructure. The book operates more as an outsider’s view on how these concepts can be adapted. Still, Watson holds space for an important conversation about how TEK – or Traditional Ecological Knowledge, as coined by Eva Marie Garroute – can lead us to a positive change in our technological trajectory.

Get the book here. 

Mythos by Stephen Fry

Inspired by his childhood love of Greek mythology, in Mythos Stephen Fry retells the classic stories from Zeus to Athena. In his signature dry and witty style, Fry finds the comedy in these well-trodden tales. Also worth checking out the audiobook, read by Fry himself.

Get the book here. 

Realtime: Making in Digital China by Clément Renaud et al.

Sourcing observations from experts from multiple disciplines, Realtime takes a simultaneously visual and textual approach to presenting the reader with an understanding of the shifting technological landscape of China. Commenting on global perception of the industry, the book sheds light on its realities.

Get the book here. 

The Case for the Green New Deal by Ann Pettifor

Pettifor accentuates the fact that we desperately need true system change if we want to respond effectively to climate change. She calls for change to financial systems and the way that we are programmed in regards to consumption. This volume helps explain why activists should not underestimate the role of finance if we want to make a real impact.

Get the book here. 

There is No Planet B by Mike Berners-Lee

Berners-Lee moves beyond technology for answers in There is no Planet B. Rather, he details the drastic and global-scale measures that we are going to have to take as a society in order to continue. He emphasises the need for cooperation and empathy that the climate movement already greatly relies on.

Get the book here. 

[Photo credit: Syd Wachs]

It’s been a big fortnight for those watching big tech and their impact on the planet, here in the UK and beyond. Apple came out with some big environmental commitments, which we’ll evaluate in this post. We’ve been watching and writing about Apple’s track record for years. And it does feel like the most ambition we’ve ever seen from the company.

Big tech’s worst performers

But first, some reminders of what their competitors are up to. (Or rather, what they are not up to.)

Samsung when compared to Fairphone

We were quite intrigued to see that last week, the Environmental Audit Committee of UK Parliament invited Fairphone and Samsung to a session about electronics and waste.

Fairphone is a product that MPs could see with their own eyes is serious about ecodesign. CEO Eva Gouwens explains that the mobile is an “ecosystem” product and that designing long-lasting ones is no small feat, but it is possible.

All Samsung has in response is suggesting a fake trade-off between durability and repairability. They are suggesting it’s impossible to make a mobile that is both waterproof and repairable. In fact Samsung has its own waterproof and user-repairable phone, the Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro. Why aren’t all their phones like this?

While Samsung bragged about footprinting their products to MPs, we STILL can’t find footprint data on their products. In the hearing, they also expressed opposition to labelling for products to help consumers make better choices (see Q155).

(And Samsung’s crocodile tears about the lack of renewable energy in Korea would be comical, given their political and economic might in the country, if their lack of seriousness was not destroying the planet…)

The Amazon in the room

To our delight, Amazon was also invited to the Parliamentary session. Notably, MPs didn’t bother to ask Amazon about preventing waste. (This is a company selling extremely low-spec, disposable tablets in the US for $35.)

But MPs asked why Amazon seems so uninterested in cleaning up its own e-waste mess. Why can’t this company use its famous logistics talents to collect dead electronics? The answer was unconvincing waffle (see Q185).

Amazon has made big fanfare about its new commitment to be carbon neutral by 2040.

Yet Amazon’s actions and inactions speak louder than words. We saw how Amazon treated its own employees in April  who dared to ask for more action on the environment and workers rights – they fired them. We’ve seen how, for years, they were consistently ranked among the worst performing of big tech in Greenpeace’s ranking on clean internet (along with… Samsung).

Meanwhile, just this week, we learn that Jeff Bezos’ net worth grew enough to power our charity’s activities for over 28,000 years.

All of us should consider now whether we want to live in Bezos' atrophied off-world… pic.twitter.com/Y1LHi73L3A

— The Restart Project (@RestartProject) July 21, 2020

Big environmental commitments from Apple (and Microsoft)

You’ll be forgiven for having missed Microsoft’s big announcement in January this year, that they would go carbon negative by 2030. To be honest, we’d not given this the attention (and scrutiny) it deserved.

Apple’s big announcement this week to go carbon neutral throughout its whole supply chain by 2030 brought us back to the topic.

This week, Microsoft reupped its January commitment and announced it will be part of a larger partnership called Transform to Net Zero.

We praise both announcements. This is what we’ve been pushing for since forever: stop just picking the low-hanging fruit and take on the enormity of the challenge of cleaning up their operations.

Questions for all

For the first time, the date does seem to recognise the urgency of the climate crisis. Could they do it faster? Yes, probably.

We have to ask ourselves whether this is another PR exercise carefully calibrated not to upset shareholders.

In the UK, Jonathan Porritt has dedicated his career to “partnering” with business to avoid the destruction of the planet. This week he sounded like he’s really lost his patience with business leaders, writing

they must stop disparaging (implicitly or explicitly) the critical importance of regulation and standard setting by governments… they must spare us the godforsaken hypocrisy of talking about ‘shared value’ when they’re still putting the interests of shareholders above every other consideration…

Do these big tech environmental commitments amount to this? It’s too early to tell, as the devil is in the details.

Offsets and removal

Microsoft’s strategy relies very heavily on “carbon removal” which by its own admission is untested and experimental. Apple will pursue 25% offsets (trees) and “innovative” carbon removal to cover its industrial footprint.

We know that poorly designed offset projects can have perverse effects on the wellbeing of communities.

While we know next to nothing about carbon removal, it seems big tech is depending too much on this tech to cover for its own operations.

Both of these elements will require intense ongoing scrutiny.

Accountability and reporting

We are going to have a hard enough time holding our elected governments to account over these carbon targets.

How will we do this with business? These are businesses that still do not publicly releasing the carbon footprint information of their products in standard form that can be audited. Let alone at the scale of their operations.

We note that many of the targets adopt a sort of “hockey stick” approach – fairly slow in the first part of the next decade with a big, kind of techno-magical uptick at the end. How can companies report in a way that helps us track how realistic this hockey stick is?

What about materials and chemicals

We hear it over and over again from industry – let us clean up the chemicals, close the material loops, let us do the repairs, let us take care of it. They resist regulation in almost all of its forms.

These are companies that produce billions of devices a year, and they promote the delusion that they can be the stewards for them over the whole of their lifecycle. Common sense tells us this is plain wrong.

No number of clever, super expensive recycling robots owned and operated by manufacturers will take care of the problem. (If they helped disseminate the technology to others, this would be a different story.)

In Apple and Samsung’s case, their businesses are still too beholden to the take-make-dispose cycle. In the case of Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, they have profit from many different services and simply do not care too much about their material footprint.

All of these companies are actively preventing third party repair and reuse of consumer products.

Ranking and tracking

With all voluntary commitments by companies, the onus seems to be on civil society to accompany processes closely and ensure adequate transparency and accountability.

We don’t have the resources at the moment to create a table that compares the various companies in their commitments, let alone a yearly roadmap to hold them to account. But we do have a sketch of what this could look like. (We left out social concerns here, but they should run right through these questions, from offsetting, to mining, to occupational hazards with chemicals.)

Carbon

• Date of carbon neutral commitment
• Does the commitment cover supply chains?
• % of offset or “removal” (perhaps % nuclear)
• Does the company publish footprint data for products? Do these adhere to ISO standards?

Materials, chemicals and product lifetimes

• Commitments to design out waste – especially in mining
• Commitments to improve e-waste collection and producer responsibility
• Does the company lobby against the Right to Repair? Is adequate software support provided for longer lifetimes?
• Does the company lobby against chemical regulation?

Reporting

• Does the company use third-party auditors?
• Is there a credible plan in place for reporting? Is it yearly?

Extending product lifetimes and a realistic approach to end of life of products should be important areas of scrutiny, and these are often over-looked in tech.

We’d like to compare Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung on the above – in simple terms that can help the average person keep track of this.

We could never do this alone. We know that some organisations are rating companies for better procurement policies. But we’re most interested in collaboratively holding corporate leadership to account at the highest level. We’re curious to know if other organisations are interested.

[Feature photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash]

Update 31 July: We’ve published the playlist of Fixfest session videos here.

On Thursday, we wrapped up the second edition of Fixfest UK, the first online edition! Thank you to the 300+ people who “attended” Fixfest UK over the past month.

The last session was about our repair data, featuring Stuart Ward of Reading Repair Cafe. Speakers showed how repair data is useful at a local, regional, national and international scale.

Recording what we discussed, and highlights

Not everybody could make every session, and there was definitely demand for recordings of the sessions. We’ll have recordings ready to share by the end of the month, and we will post on our YouTube channel and our forum on Restarters.net. [Update: we’ve published the sessions here.]

We had 11 sessions total. Listen here to the Keynote by Josh Babarinde of Cracked It, London social enterprise teaching at-risk youth how to fix mobiles.

Other highlights

• Chris (Cambridgeshire Repair Cafes) demo of his component tester – to the delight of many assembled fixers.
• John (Repair Cafe Wales) and Clare (Repair Cafe Portsmouth) highly participatory session on adult learning – we all got involved.
• The highly competitive Glasgow Quiz by Repair Cafe Glasgow, where we learned that the Govan Hogbacks were NOT a heavy metal band from Glasgow
• Jennie (Cheeky Handmades) sewing machine “Ask Me Anything” – such great energy and wisdom!
• Our Ugo telling the Commons Environmental Audit Committee that industry will fight regulation “tooth and nail”
• Felipe Fonseca (University of Dundee) and his takedown of the corporate “smart city” agenda
• Lightning Talks Compere Dave Green’s amazing microphone!
• Tony Brown’s top tips for trash-picking TVs
• Chris and Lee’s story about the first piece of toast ever made at Repair Cafe Belfast
• Monique (Restart) tour of Dutch and German repair data – such complexity and precision

What participants said

I’ll be sharing insights learned, tips, stories etc with the rest of our repair cafe team

…the overview of the issues and the range of topics covered was really good. Having it online was a bonus as it turned out…

Wide variety of subjects and people of all different backgrounds

[I] liked being part of fixing community.

Please give back to the community

Here are three things you can do to give back to the community and help promote our cause of better, more repairable products!

1. Please take a couple of minutes to send us your feedback to make future Fixfests even better. We recognise there were some technical difficulties with our platform, and we’d like to hear what we can do better.
2. Help out with our new online data project, MobiFix you can spare 30 seconds or a couple of minutes. You can do this while on hold to your utility company, or waiting for something.
3. We’re launching a drive to get missing data in the Fixometer! 1/3 repair events in the year prior to March are missing data. Please get in touch if we can help you enter some of the missing data. This data will help us push for more repairable products.

… And lastly, see you in Glasgow for #COP26?

No really. We’re serious about a repair fringe event in November 2021. Get in touch if you’d like to join us there.

Thanks to our sponsors Nesta and DCMS for funding both editions of Fixfest UK.

Last week, we gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) as a part of their electronic waste inquiry.

We already submitted written evidence to the inquiry, both in 2019 and after it was restarted in March 2020. The Committee timed this inquiry to inform the review and revision of the UK’s implementation of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will make changes to the system governing electronic waste by the end of 2020, and Parliament would like to have its say in the process.

A focus on waste prevention and repair

In the session, members impressed us with their interest in interventions up the waste hierarchy. MPs focused on tackling the root causes of our electronic waste problem. (Some of this occurred in the first session, which you can view here.)

Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network pointed out that our current electronic waste system is failing to prevent waste

EPR [extended producer responsibility] is one way that people have thought of to try to internalise costs and to keep things out of the landfill, but again it is so focused on recycling, sadly, because when it was originally designed it was meant to drive green design but, unfortunately, with the way it has been implemented, that has not taken place. We can modify EPR—we can tweak it so that it does more for green design

Numerous members showed a personal interest in better products (Barry Gardiner – Lab, Brent North – in eco-design), as well as repair and overcoming the barriers to repair (Robert McNally – SNP, Falkirk, Robert Goodwill – Con, Scarborough and Whitby, and Ian Levy – Con, Blyth Valley).

Gardiner said

…one of the most important issues we have to grapple with as a Committee is whether regulation or economic incentives are more effective in driving producers to minimise the environmental footprint of their products and to design modular systems that can be easily disassembled, repaired and reused.

We were pleasantly surprised to hear McNally quoting our research together with Nottingham Trent University

Research by Nottingham Trent University found that 45% of the population cannot name a commercial repairer that they can trust. What can we do to make it easier for people to get faulty electronic and electrical products repaired?

And to hear Goodwill and Levy, who are both farmers, express frustration about the barriers to repair of tractors and other household products.

Our partners in the European Right to Repair campaign, Green Alliance, pointed out the emerging need to consider software. Quoting Libby Peake

I would add as well that it is not just technical problems that do prevent repair and products reaching their full lifetime. We also have obsolescence of software. In a lot of instances products are not designed in order to be upgraded. An additional problem in terms of something failing is not just the hardware; it could also be the fact that the new software is not supported. Again that is something that could be legislated for. It could be mandated that products can be upgraded. That is something that I would like to see brought in in terms of eco-design regulations.

Our evidence on Right to Repair

We gave examples of how the system is broken, and of the three pillars to the right to repair: design for repair, access to documentation and diagnostics and access to affordable spare parts. Ugo reported to the Committee

We have been progressively losing our right to tinker and repair the products that we already own and this has happened, in a way, silently. We have not really been fully aware that we were progressively losing all of this… We should not underestimate people’s frustration for not being fully in control of products that they have bought and it has been lost.

We are in a situation where potentially having to replace a microphone in a phone would, according to the manufacturer, require replacing the whole phone and paying for half the original price. I do not think this is in the interests of consumers and the planet.

Nadia Whittome – Lab, Nottingham East – asked whether industry has been supportive of the right to repair. We gave our most honest answer. Industry fought tooth and nail in the US against similar measures. In Brussels they pursued a behind-the-scenes “death by a thousand cuts” strategy.

The future here in the UK

We don’t have much in common with industry — except that we agree on the UK aligning its standards with Europe’s. This will be a key point going forward.

We believe that radical change is needed to “extended producer responsibility” for electronic waste. Government needs to take a more active role in the system. So far it’s too hands-off. The penalties for missed collection targets are too small. And the producers themselves are allowed to decide how to spend them!

More importantly, we need government to take an active role in preventing waste, by promoting standards for repairable products. We’ve said it before, but the easiest way to do so would be to keep up with Europe. If the UK would like to go beyond Europe, then it can create a “universal” right to repair, for DIY-ers, community repair activists and professionals.

We are very happy to announce that The Restart Project is a partner of “Sharepair”, a new project to help build a “digital support infrastructure for citizens in the repair economy”. It runs through 2023.

The aim of the initiative is to reduce the amount of waste from electrical and electronic goods, which is one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the European Union. While consumption of electrical and electronic equipment is very high throughout North-West Europe, the region is home to a growing citizen repair movement, fighting back against this upsurge in waste.

However, while consumers indicate a high willingness to repair, there is still a large gap to be filled between what the network of Restart Parties and Repair Cafes can do, and what a thriving repair ecosystem could deliver, including better signposting and access to reliable professional repairers.

The project is primarily funded by Interreg North West Europe, which covers 60% of the budget of the initiative. ShaRepair focuses on a region of Europe including the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, most of France and Netherlands and part of Germany. The project is led by the City of Leuven in Belgium, and brings together a broad network of universities, cities working towards a circular economy, community repair networks and other organisations researching and advocating for repair.

Sharepair aims to help citizen repair initiatives increase their impact and skills through the use of digital tools. It also targets consumers at home with better access to information on repair options, and guidance to access professional repair services. Some of the partners will also work on a database of open source designs for 3d-printing spare parts.

Restart is involved in multiple aspects of Sharepair, here are the main ones:

• Open Repair Alliance: with partners we’re working towards improving the Open Repair Data Standard, and to continue expand International Repair Day in coming years
• We’ll increase our focus on making the most of the repair data collected at community events, include using it to inform future policies on repair at European level
• We’ll continue develop Restarters.net to make sure the tools we create and the knowledge shared in the platform are accessible to the wide range of repair initiatives involved in the project
• We’re expanding our directory of repair businesses, while cooperating with cities in Belgium and the Netherlands developing their own version
• The next international edition of Fixfest will be co-funded by Sharepair

We’ll be posting updates as we make progress on our involvement in the project. For more information on Sharepair, visit its website.

After our initial disappointment in cancelling a live event in Glasgow, we’re really excited about Fixfest UK this year. We have more space than ever – for up to 200 participants in a month long online gathering for repair activists. We’ll share perspectives, inspire and learn from each other and continue building towards a fairer, more capable and greener future.

This is primarily aimed at people already actively volunteering and sharing skills in their community, but we’ll have space for allies and newbies. Please get in touch directly if this your case.

We’ll meet every Thursday evening and Saturday morning from 4th June through to our closing session on 9th July. We encourage you to get a ticket now, create a profile and check out the programme

Get Ticket

The Fixfest UK programme

We’ll open on 4th June with an Inspiring Keynote from Josh Babarinde, Founder and CEO of Cracked It, a mobile repair social enterprise staffed by ex-offenders and at-risk youth.

During the same evening, next, we’ll launch straight into a session on Right to Repair in the UK, led by Libby Peake of Green Alliance and Restart’s own Ugo Vallauri.

Next, Restart’s Janet Gunter will lead a session on how UK repair groups can work together effectively as a decentralised network. How can we help each other, strengthen our work and even fundraise together?

After that, Chris Moller of Cambridgeshire Repair Cafes will tell us about a scandalous component responsible for the failure of countless products — the electrolytic capacitor. Why are so many failing in our TVs and appliances? What can be done?

Then John McCrory of Repair Café Wales will lead a workshop on Engaging Online with Adult Learners of Repair. This will be a great follow-on to a community call on online events in April.

On 20th June, the day we were supposed to meet in Glasgow, we’ll be welcomed by Jon Dawes of Glasgow Repair Café for a Saturday morning social. BYO coffee, tea, smoothie or cake.

Next University of Dundee researcher Felipe Fonseca will lead a session on reuse and repair in urban settings. How can we prevent so many reusable and fixable items from going to waste?

East London friend Jennie of Cheeky Handmades will lead a Sewing Machine Repair and Maintenance Skillshare. Sewing machines link textile menders and electrical fixers. We’ll learn about machines old and new, and focus on taking care of older machines built to last.

Dorkbot London’s delightful MC Dave Green will host our Lightning Talks, Demos and Show ‘n’ Tell session.

In our closing session on 9th July with Restart’s Neil Mather and Monique Szpak, we’ll look into the data we are collecting at our repair events. Our data is powerful. Each repair is an act of commitment by a frustrated person, more powerful than a signature on a petition. How can we ensure our data can change the system of production upstream?

How to add to the programme

This is an unconference, and half of the sessions have been suggested by participants. There are still two ways to shape the programme:

• We invite anybody from the community to propose a five minute lightning talk, demo or show ‘n’ tell for the session on 2nd July
• We also invite proposals for the remaining opening session on Saturday 4th July

[Photo credit Vicky Grout – Positive News]

The coronavirus pandemic has presented huge challenges to communities around the world. As specialists in running local events, community repair groups and networks are certainly no exception as we’ve had to cancel or postpone most of our activities.

Fortunately, we see the world through the lens of repair and are practised problem-solvers. At Restart we’ve been inspired to see how groups around the world have adapted by keeping their communities connected and repairing through the internet.

But moving community repair online isn’t necessarily a simple process; the events we run as community groups and networks offer so much. A repair event is a social space for the community to gather. It’s a chance to share and learn new skills, save waste from landfill and divert CO2 from the atmosphere. It’s also an educational opportunity to learn about wider issues such as the Right to Repair and the upstream impacts of the products we buy.

Let’s explore how different groups and networks are continuing this work online.

Online community repair events: the social element

The most popular model so far is simply to replicate the offline repair event experience as closely as possible: set up an online video conference room and invite repair volunteers and people with broken items.

This is the approach adopted by Repair Café Paris, whose 9th arrondissement group is inviting the local community to sign up to online sessions for help with repairs. They run sessions on Saturday afternoons via Zoom with a handful of interested repairer volunteers. The team spends time with each attendee individually, helping them diagnose issues with their broken item, providing information about possible solutions and then walking them though how to fix it.

When an object is repaired online, the person who managed to repair their object on their own bursts with pride and happiness. They never would have thought themselves capable of it.
– Emmanuel Vallée, Organiser Repair Café Paris (9eme arrondissement)

While events have been going well, group organiser, Emmanuel, acknowledges that “the objectives are not the same as a face-to-face Repair Café.” Each online event is only long enough for a handful of repairs, so it’s the quality of interaction that matters most: the chance for the group’s volunteers to stay connected over a shared activity.

Similar events are being run by other groups around the world, including Reading Repair Café (UK), Repair Café Aschaffenburg (DE), Repair Café North Carolina (USA), Repair Café Steenokkerzeel (BE), Marlow Repair Café (UK) and more.

US-based Fixit Clinic and Repair Café Malmö have teamed up to take this concept to a wider audience by hosting international repair advice sessions via Zoom. Twice a month, repairers and owners of broken things based anywhere in the world can sign up to join a virtual Fixit Clinic and get help in English or Swedish. As in Paris, the number of repairs attempted is limited, especially when compared to an in-person event. However, these sessions use separate online rooms for repairs, allowing multiple advice sessions to take place at the same time and increasing the number of people helped.

^ Virtual Fixit Clinic, 5th of April 2020

As noted by Fixit Clinic founder, Peter Mui, this format not only helps people repair their own items, but can also be a way to promote repair to new audiences and even has some advantages over traditional repair events. For example, it’s possible to assess items normally too large to bring to an event in person.

But perhaps the most important benefit of these kinds of online repair advice events, is the community element. By offering social spaces built around repair, these groups are helping their repair communities stay in touch as well as forming new networks of repairers around the world.

At Restart, we’ve taken a lighter approach by organising online socials for our community in London. These usually involve gathering in a video call with a drink and playing games like pictionary or taking quizzes. We’ve learned that you know the community is bonding when everyone recognises each others’ cats!

On-demand repair support

Instead of translating in-person events online to offer live repair support, others have been working to maximise the number of repairs they can facilitate by offering on-demand repair advice.

Back in March, Repair Together—the Belgian network of Repair Cafés covering Brussels and Wallonia—began receiving a deluge of requests for help with repairs via email. Many were related to sewing machines that had broken down from heavy use while making face masks for medical staff. In response, the network launched an online repair advice service.

The idea is simple: anyone can complete an online form about a broken object while Repair Together’s large community of repair volunteers browse the entries and assign themselves repairs. Since the initiative launched in early April, over 70 repair volunteers have taken on more than 150 repairs. Around half of this total have reached a conclusion with 65% of those being fixed successfully.

“This remote repair action, even if it does not in any way replace the ‘physical’ Repair Café, brilliantly shares the values we defend: weaving social bonds, training citizens to repair […], preventing objects from ending up in the trash and promoting the right to repair.”
– Emmanuel van der Bruggen, organiser, Repair Together

Elsewhere in Belgium, community repair group Maakbaar Leuven are running a similar initiative for Flanders. Repair Connects is a portal through which the public can report a broken item, submit photos of the problem (and the product’s barcode) and be matched up with a volunteer repairer.

We at Restart are offering our own online repair support. Anyone can tag us on social media (@restartproject) and we’ll ask some basic questions before posting the request in our online forum. Here, our community offers suggestions that we can pass on the person in need. This is similar to Leeds Repair Café, who are using their Facebook group to offer repair advice to people locally.

Focusing heavily on repair presents a few challenges. Many people requesting help may not have access to the tools or parts required to complete the repair. They are also unlikely to be in a position to attempt any repairs that are more complex or risky. In such cases, we’ve found that helping people find reliable repair businesses is often a good solution. This approach also lacks the ‘liveness’ of an event and isn’t as social an experience, although this is often a matter of preference. Nevertheless, it does offer greater flexibility and can scale well, as Repair Together’s experience shows.

Focusing on education, skills and awareness

In-person repair events are not just great opportunities to fix stuff, but also to learn how to repair and why it matters in the first place. While the groups and networks mentioned so far do address these questions in their events, others have adopted different online event formats to focus specifically on education and awareness.

One such network is Repair Café Wales, who are now running a series of interactive online repair tutorials via Microsoft Teams. Each session focuses on a different set of skills requested by the community, including woodworking, sewing and bike repair and is led by a volunteer experienced in that area. The audience can join sessions live or follow along with a recording.

Similarly, the French spare parts company, Spareka, ran an online ‘repair school’ in which 250 participants were invited to ask questions about fixing domestic appliances (including ‘white goods’ such as washing machines and fridges). A technical expert then answered these questions with the aid of schematics and other resources on the company’s website.

By embracing digital mediums to find ways of teaching important repair skills, these initiatives offer engaging supplements to existing sources of repair information such as iFixit and our own community repair wiki.

Repair Café Bengaluru has taken this concept further still by offering a 6-week online repair summer school for children aged 8 to 14. Having originally planned a series of in-person sessions, group organiser Purna and her team moved quickly to adapt the programme to be delivered via Webex. Over 11 sessions, the summer school introduces kids to a wide range of skills, from woodwork and stitching, to electrical repair and plumbing. Each session covers a different topic and the children are set homework to clean or repair certain items at home.

Teaching children about the importance of repair has long been a priority for the team here at Restart too. With so many children stuck at home and schools and parents looking for engaging educational content, the time seemed right to develop an online workshop for kids. We decided to focus on smartphones. Starting with a live disassembly, we used an animated video to guide our discovery of the materials inside the phone and where they came from. This journey allowed us to to explore the upstream impacts of the products we buy and how repair can help reduce our environmental impact. We’re now hoping to work with schools to develop this further.

Addressing the bigger picture is also important for Karen & Danny Ellis of Mend It, Australia, whose main goal is “to continue to raise awareness of repair and the right to repair.” Together with Moonee Valley Repair Café, they broadcast informal interviews with guest speakers about a range of repair-related topics. This recently included a chat with Right to Repair researcher Professor Leanne Wiseman from Griffith University. By hosting these interviews within an online repair event, Karen and Danny hope to reach a larger audience.

Choosing what we value and being clear

If there are lessons to be learned from running repair events online, perhaps the first is the importance of focus. Online activities can be highly effective. But online spaces are fundamentally different to offline ones. They tend to be better suited to a narrower focus, which means it’s hard to reproduce the wide range of positive impacts we’re used to seeing from events.

By adapting our activities to fit online spaces, repair groups and networks across the globe are having to decide what is most important for their community. Whether it’s keeping our communities connected, helping people repair broken belongings, teaching repair skills or advocating for the Right to Repair, the approaches described here all prioritise different outcomes.

So, when thinking about running an online event, it helps to ask: what do we want to achieve?

Once you’ve decided on an approach, the second lesson is to set clear expectations. Who is it for and what’s the purpose?

The organisers we’ve spoken to agreed that their most successful events were those with the clearest aims and audiences. People want to know what they’ll get out of attending your event, so tell them.

Finally, ask for help. If you’re thinking about running your own online events, you don’t have to start from scratch. Our online community is a great place to get advice from other organisers and repairers, including most of those mentioned above.

A new poll by YouGov shows that more Britons would like to repair their smartphones instead of replacing them (47%), as opposed to those who would prefer to get a new one (45%). For laptops, a strong majority (58%) prefers to repair rather than replace.

Now is a good to time to remind that 72% of Britons believe the government should intervene to make products easier to repair and recycle. And the new YouGov data reveals crucial barriers to repair.

Cost

The YouGov poll finds

Half of Brits who say they would not repair their device if it became necessary (53%) cite cost as one of the reasons

Artificially high cost of spare parts

Anti-competitive practices contribute to this high cost. Many electronics manufacturers make no secret that they restrict access to genuine spare parts for their products. In white goods and appliances, there is a healthy market of genuine spare parts. Third party companies compete to sell these.

Simply not so in the electronics sector: most manufacturers do not allow the sale of their genuine parts. DIY-ers and independent professionals cannot find genuine spare parts. Often times refurbished or reused parts are the only option, but even these are made expensive as quality assurance adds to the cost. (So does the fact that companies like Apple are weaponising copyright and attempting to prevent the use of refurbished parts.)

Access to genuine spare parts is one of the main rallying cries of the Right to Repair movement.

The European Commission will discuss “ecodesign” regulations for smartphones from 2021, including access to spare parts and repair information. Will the UK government adopt similar regulations? (It’s hard to be optimistic, based on the current lack of firm commitment on adopting similar EU provisions for appliances.)

And access to spare parts is the first hurdle, but we are already preparing for a struggle for affordable, genuine spare parts.

The role of VAT and tax

Tax adds to the cost of repair, when it could be used to incentivise job-creating repairs. In the UK, repairs on luxury yachts and private aircraft are zero-rated for VAT. Not the case for household products, like electronics. (Or even bikes.) Some European countries have lowered VAT on repairs for certain products. This was already possible as a member of the EU and it is easier than ever now.

Perceived (and real) obsolescence

The same number that cited cost as the reason they would not repair in the poll said their motivation to replace was: “my device is old anyways”.

Incessant marketing by electronics manufacturers is one powerful factor. But it’s not the only one.

How much of this perceived or real obsolescence is down to the fact that many users experience their smartphones losing software and security support?

Over 40% of Android users were stuck on insecure, unsupported versions of Android, according to the latest data released from Google in 2019.

And what about moments like “Batterygate” in 2016, when Apple throttled the performance of mobiles without informing users?

Could the comparatively low motivation of Britons to repair tablets come down to some of these factors? (Along with the cost of replacing a battery or repairing a screen?) Neither of these factors come into play with laptops to the same degree.

The government has announced it will introduce legislation to require manufacturers of internet “connected devices” to tell shoppers how long they will provide software support. Why can’t the same be done for mobiles, the connected device in our pockets?

Convenience

The YouGov poll finds

Other typical reasons for discarding a device instead of repairing it are the general inconvenience (27%), not having a device during the repair (16%) and the time it would take to get it fixed (12%).

Often times, when a mobile breaks, device owners look to manufacturers for repairs. It’s natural.

But their authorised repair centres often times cite long wait times and have complicated processes that involve posting a product.

And let’s be real. As incumbents who make profits off of selling new devices, manufacturers have little incentive to provide convenient repair services.

Independents offer a more convenient, immediate solution as they are often on our doorstep. But they have become harder to find online, as Google has been suppressing their advertisements since last year. Why have they targeted the independent repair sector? Could it be because of their shared interests with big manufacturers? (Google is after all both a vendor of mobiles, but also profits off of their mobile OS, put on 74% of the world’s smartphones by other manufacturers.)

And just like it can be a challenge to find a good independent garage or bike shop, it can be daunting to find a reliable independent electronics repairer.

We’ve been working on this in London (to start) with our Repair Directory. We currently list 100+ businesses in over 12 boroughs, based on three simple criteria. We’re looking to expand this work, and we think local authorities and waste authorities across the country should invest in making repair more convenient. And this investment will create value and jobs.

Let’s remove the barriers to repair

So for every reason named in the poll for people not to repair electronics, there is scope for the government to take action.

On cost, the government can and should require access to affordable genuine spare parts, as Europe is working towards, and reduce VAT on repairs, as it has for boats and aircraft. In relation to perceived (and real) obsolescence, the government can extend its proposal on “connected devices” to smartphones, requiring manufacturers to state how long they will provide software support. Lastly, on convenience, access to information on where to repair needs to become as simple as where to recycle. And government can play a role, at a national and a local level.

Many groups in our network are using our software to log community repair data after events. We asked some of them to tell us more about their experience with data. What motivated them to start recording data at repair events? What have they used repair data for?

Repair data is so powerful – both at a local and international level. Many groups report that data is key to motivating and educating volunteer fixers and visitors. It helps identify trends, and barriers to repair, whether they be tools, spare parts or knowledge. Showing impact through data helps with fundraising and sustaining local activity.

But the benefits don’t end at a local level. Sharing repair data contributes to a growing movement pushing for more repairable products. A number of groups reported feeling motivated to be a part of the international Right to Repair campaign. They can see that their data is contributing a much larger, powerful dataset that can convince policymakers to make it easier to use things for longer.

Read on to find out more!

Crediton Repair Cafe

Crediton Repair Cafe joined the Fixometer last year. Ian Barnard walks us through the main reasons they use their data for:

It turns “oh, we repaired 32 items last Saturday” into something more concrete related to our reduction of humanity’s impact on the environment “we saved 280Kg of CO2” and then what really matters is that this number means something to our volunteers and visitors.

Hackney Fixers

Hackney Fixers started using the Fixometer three years ago. They were already recording data in a spreadsheet at their events to measure their fix rate and performance, however they ended up uploading all of this historical info to the Fixometer as well!

We talk to James Diamond to find out more. They have used the Fixometer to monitor their own fix rate, but also to report their impact to funders.

The Fixometer added transparency and statistics, such as waste diversion and CO2 savings. We included the data in our end of grant reports as additional evidence. Our funders are interested in the data for the events they support, particularly the kg of waste prevented.

Nottingham Fixers

Nottingham Fixers joined the Fixometer in 2018. We talk to Sarah who shares with us their initial motivation to get involved with data:

We have somewhere to record the info about the electrical items we fix. It’s fantastic and motivating to tell people how much waste and carbon we’ve / they’ve saved collectively, which meets one of the central aims of our organisation. It helps us look for trends in repairs that are brought to us, we can monitor the parts we need… But also we are ‘part of something’ bigger than just our group.

They are also using data to share their carbon and waste saved on their social media channels and at meetings, and to look for trends with the numbers/types of repairs they do at events.

Repair Cafe Portsmouth

Repair Cafe Portsmouth started collecting the data on the Fixometer in 2018, motivated to see their impact in the community. For instance, they use data to let all our volunteers know after each session how much was fixed and how many items were seen by each category. A great way to motivate, we think! Beyond the community impact, this repair group were also driven by the need for policy change at national and international level. This vision is also reflected in their signing of the Manchester Declaration. Check it out if you want to know more about our shout for repairable products in the UK, or if you are a UK community repair group who would like to sign too.

As Clare describes:

We wanted to measure what we were doing locally to help with funding bids and to see what difference we were making in our community (was it worthwhile!)  We were interested in adding our data to strength the lobbying activity to get things changed nationally and on a European level.  It’s not the quickest thing to do, but we want to add to the grassroots data.

Reading Repair Cafe

Reading Repair Cafe also joined the Fixometer in 2018. Stuart tells us about the start of this repair group, which was originally an outreach activity at the Reading Hackspace, but has now “taken on a life of its own”, although still in close collaboration. We learn about their journey with data:

We originally just kept a scrap of paper during the events to log the number of repairs, and the intention was to eventually do something with this data in a spreadsheet at some point, but that never really happened. We did report the general number of repairs at each session, mainly as a gauge to how busy we were, and whether we were doing the right things to promote the event.

One of the key elements of moving forward is the demonstration of the ecological impact that we are having. And this is where the detailed data that the Fixometer gathers is vital.

Restarters Norway

Restarters Oslo started using the Fixometer in 2017. They even embed repair data, served up by the Fixometer, to their website! Kaja Ahnfelt, the founder of Restarters Norway (and Oslo) wrote her master thesis about the Restart Project and Restart Parties. Through her work she saw the importance of recording data from the parties both to demonstrate impact and for research purposes. When she then went on to take Restart Parties to Norway, she already knew the importance of the data collection, and early on implemented the Fixometer into the website to be able to demonstrate the group’s impact. Kaja Juul Skarbø, from Restarters Norway shares

Yes, we definitely find repair data useful for demonstrating impact. This includes both internally and externally: internally to motivate volunteers by showing how much the group has fixed and externally to demonstrate impact and progress. I will use the data internally to brag/motivate, for example “this spring you as a group have collectively saved the planet xx kg CO2” and externally in talks etc. As mentioned above we also value the use of data for research purposes.

We believe having an international dataset on community repair is important. Also, we often get questions such as “which repairs do you do most often” or “which repairs are difficult” etc, and ideally the data can then give good answers. The data is also useful to demonstrate how much we’re able to fix then and there (approx 50%), and how little is actually lost cases (approx 20%).

Share your repair data

Get in touch if you are a repair organisation and would like to share your own repair data with the wider repair community.

For Earth Day, we ran an online activity called “Mobiles Come from the Earth” aimed at kids, but really for anybody over 10 years old. This was the first of the kind that we’ve run, building on educational resources we created together with partners in Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Sweden with European funding from EIT Raw Materials.

Here’s the recording

The event really exceeded our expectations. Firstly, everybody that opened our email instructions attended the event. We had 80 registered participants, and 46 participants who attended live on the day, from a number of different countries, and really great engagement on chat from some of the kids who attended.

There were a couple of technical glitches and learnings, but for the most part using an e-learning platform where we focused on the live chat was really good.

Here are some comments from participants

Really great that you organized this and always like info sessions that are geared towards kids that explain the realities of life!

I liked the animations and where the phone got disassembled

My children liked your graphic animations

The future — working with teachers and museums

We would love to deliver this activity together with teachers, in a sort of virtual classroom.

We think with a simplification of our language (main comment from parent attendees!), this activity works well with pupils towards the end of primary school.

We’re working on longer, more in-depth versions for secondary school students, focused on the following subjects: chemistry, computer science, geography and design and technology. We’d love to partner with teachers in those subjects to refine and deliver these.

If you teach in a primary school or secondary school and are interested, please get in touch.

There is also potentially scope to deliver something like this through museums, targeting young people. Sadly, a couple of “Lates” appearances we’d planned with big London museums have been cancelled. In response, we think we could learn how to produce an interactive online event like this for the 18-25 year old age group as well.

Meanwhile we are sharing the motion-graphics video and the script with our partners in the five other countries, so they can create events for their own local needs.

We co-hosted a webinar entitled “Are We Prepared to Repair COVID-19 Medical Equipment” with industry ally ABI Electronics, a Yorkshire-based manufacturer of advanced diagnostic and component-level repair equipment for industries like transport, aerospace. 

Two things bring us together: the underlying belief that our society and economy need to value maintenance and repair, for the economic and environmental benefits they bring, and an urgent concern for what the next weeks and months will bring during this pandemic in the UK.

Together we wanted to explore how we can maintain and service all Covid-19 related medical equipment given it will be put under unprecedented use in the coming weeks and months. 

Even the new ventilators and CPAP machines being manufactured now by Dyson and Mercedes Formula One will need to be repaired and maintained.

Seen from outside the medical and biomedical field, but based on both negative and positive experiences we bring from other sectors, we genuinely wondered: are we ready?

Panelist perspectives

Our panel brought a great deal of insight, from within the biomedical industry, as well as transferrable insights from ABI’s work in other industries, as well as activist perspectives from iFixit and Open Rights Group on the barriers to repair.

Dr John Sandham
Chairman of EBME (Electronic and BioMedical Engineering)

He’s worked in medical industry for 35 years (last 20 as chairman of EBME site). The biggest issue at the moment: unprecedented number of devices being put into service (e.g. in Excel Centre AKA Nightingale Hospital 50,000 devices). We could be looking at 200,000 pieces of equipment UK-wide. Trying to commission all this equipment is difficult. In a usual hospital, one technician looks after around 1,000 pieces of equipment. We don’t have enough qualified technicians to look after all the new equipment, even though lots of engineers are moving from hospitals to field hospitals. The good news: engineers don’t necessarily have to be BioMed specialists, particularly for low-risk equipment. He believes the sharing of service manuals is very important and it seems to be starting to happen now.

Dr Helen Meese
Founder and MD of The Care Machine

A huge amount of equipment will be arriving in hospitals in next few weeks, and lots of effort required to maintain them. Dr Meese is part of clinical engineering team at the Excel Centre, or Nightingale Hospital and has been trying to work with engineering institutions to recruit volunteer engineers to support existing biomedical engineer workforce. They are currently putting together teams for London, Manchester and Birmingham after an overwhelming response of 622 respondents in just 24 hours. All are professionally trained and qualified and can support servicing of devices over next few weeks. The next challenge is to focus on rest of the country – look out for more calls for volunteers for other areas coming soon.

Willian dos Santos
International Sales Manager, ABI Electronics

ABI designs and manufactures electronic diagnostics equipment across many different sectors (defence, aerospace, manufacturing, biomedical etc.) They have been advocating a triple approach on medical equipment: building new ventilators or breathing aids, re-commissioning and repairing older ones and working with biomed engineer networks and offering their technology at subsidised prices and free training. But, lots of biomed engineers have said to ABI that they feel their hands are tied by liability if they adopt new procedures and solutions.

Olivia Webb
Outreach Coordinator, iFixit

iFixit have been creating repair documentation for consumer electronics for consumer electronics for 16 years. They’ve been hearing for years that medical manufacturers have been restricting access to documentation. They are now working to compile a database of documentation (manuals for ventilators specifically at the moment) relating to medical equipment. Lots of people from their large online community have volunteered. They’re organised on the site and soon they’ll create step-by-step repair guides for each type of ventilator, which will be translated into other languages by volunteers. Then they will then move onto other types of equipment, like imaging equipment.

Jim Killock
Director of Open Rights Group

The Open Rights Group is concerned usually with freedom of expression and privacy. But here they are concerned with “digital rights management”, more commonly associated with digital music and e-books, but it is spreading into other areas like cars, tractors and medical equipment. Software (which can be copyrighted) is being embedded into medical equipment, technical restrictions placed on this software, meaning that only the vendor can access/manage the software, including for diagnostics. Use of the equipment often requires cloud software provided by vendor. This is all protected by copyright law. Often, international treaties back up these kinds of measures. Companies may well need to respond by removing their DRM on their devices in order to facilitate repair.

Questions, some answers and the big challenges ahead

We were reassured by Dr Sandham and Dr Meese that we will have the people and most of the critical equipment in place soon. According to Dr Sandham, the UK doesn’t have big  stockpiles of decommissioned equipment like other countries. Also, they believe that CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machines currently being produced will contribute significantly to meeting the needs of people hospitalised for COVID19.

However the panel raised real questions about whether the current ways of working and systems and procedures to maintain equipment will be appropriate during this crisis. Professionals on the ground are concerned with issues of regulation, legal hurdles like intellectual property and perceived liability.

Here are some of the take-aways from a really productive Q&A.

People

• Volunteer engineers will be trained up to work under supervision of clinical engineers at NHS field hospitals. They are absolutely up to the task of helping with set-up and maintenance of equipment, especially less critical equipment.
• A culture of risk aversion has arisen among biomedical engineers and technicians – sometimes the fear of liability for changing procedure prevents sensible repairs and solutions. Managers can play a role in changing this.

Spare parts and supply chains

• Service contracts can stand in the way of timely repairs. Leadership is required from engineering management on when/how to break away from service contracts.
• Before a moment of crisis, professionals must be empowered and trained to perform component-level repairs and find new supply chains for spare parts.

Documentation and diagnostics

• The need for new, streamlined test and maintenance procedures became apparent. Again, leadership and management is needed to convey this and reassure biomedical engineers.
• Some manufacturers are moving towards publicly releasing service manuals after a long history of keeping them locked away. This should be encouraged and institutions should bring pressure to bear on those that are lagging behind. The public can help through iFixit’s initiative.
• More clarity is needed on the question of intellectual property “lockdown” on key often-replaced parts and software by manufacturers. There are precedents for the reverse engineering of software, but what about physical components?

Together with our volunteers, we’ve spent the last couple of days intensively diving into the world of repair of critical care medical equipment and ventilators. Our research-from-home raised some really concerning questions.

The starting point — ventilators

In the UK, critical care equipment is a serious issue. Many have observed we have one of the lowest rates of critical care beds per capita.

The ventilated beds situation is not much better. Research from last year revealed:

Ventilated beds per 100,000
Australia – 10.51
NZ – 5.93
UK – 5.64

This is probably why the UK government announced an effort to seek out new manufacturing capacity for ventilator equipment. The media paid this announcement a great deal of attention, and we’ve seen much debate and criticism of this initiative. At the same time, many are working on “open source” designs.

But are we ready to repair what we ventilators already have?

But we’re really worried that not enough attention is being paid to the maintenance of the equipment we already have. This is equipment that NHS staff is already trained on. Even during “normal” times, the equipment needs regular servicing. But we don’t know how well it will do under constant use, for weeks at a time.

We’d love to learn that there is a silent, big effort under way to deal with all of the issues we’ll raise below. We’re just watching from the outside.

In looking at documents from NHS Supply Chain, we rely on 11 companies for intensive care ventilators. Of these, six are also providers of repair services and maintenance contracts.

One of these companies is known to aggressively force well-meaning people sharing their repair manuals to stop. Two more are extremely large multinational companies known for their tight control over supply chains.

When existing arrangements break down

The case of the emergency 3D printing job in Brescia, Italy that saved ten lives when manufacturer supply chains failed gained the world’s attention. Especially because the manufacturer threatened to sue.

It appears in the medical tech space, manufacturers mostly control access to spare parts, there are few to no third-party vendors. What happens when manufacturers fully control supply chains and these are disrupted? Are we prepared for this both technically and in a legal sense? (Dark Matter Labs raised these questions during calmer times.)

Much of NHS equipment is covered by service contracts which probably restrict options in terms of repairs. Then at any given time, equipment goes without a service contract. What in-house or independent “surge capacity” exists for servicing this equipment?

In digging deeper, we learn from NHS Supply Chain that — this appears to be for all equipment

Please comment below if you have insights or perspectives to put some of these questions to rest.

If you know of broken equipment you can report it here.

Also contact us directly if you can help raise these strategic questions in the right places.

We’re a founding member of the European Right to Repair Campaign, who celebrated a major milestone yesterday, with the release of the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan.

The five-year blueprint outlines actions envisaged by the European Commission in order to move away from the wasteful take-make-use-dispose economic model towards a system where sustainable products, services and business models become the new normal. In recognition of frustration that our stuff breaks down too quickly and cannot be reused, repaired or recycled, it also promises a ‘new right to repair’ to be established as a key lever of change.

While the strategy remains thin on the details, it provides plenty of reason to feel hopeful. Not only does it fill the urgent need for a policy framework that prevents wasteful consumption and built-in obsolescence of many of our products starting with consumer electronics, it also promises to empower consumers to make more informed choices about their purchases.

The plan promises

Sustainable product policy legislative initiative that aims to improve, among other sustainability aspects, repairability of all products on the European market and counter premature obsolescence – electronics and ICT products are identified as a priority

Revision of EU consumer law to establish a new ‘right to repair’ and provide point of sale information on lifespan of products, as well as availability of repair services, spare parts and repair manuals

Circular Electronics Initiative, with focus on mobile phones, tablets, laptops and printers and including focus on both hardware and software as well as the introduction of common charger

Revision of economic instruments to enable Member States to use VAT rates to promote repair services

Will we benefit from the Right to Repair here in the UK?

Many people have been asking us whether we in the UK will benefit.

The answer is: it’s unclear, and it’s up to us to make sure the UK government matches the European measures, or does better.

Last year, ministers publicly pledged support for the ecodesign measures, and Defra told the BBC it was planning on adopting “similar measures” post-Brexit.

But this government has made it clear that it does not like European standards. They say they want to do better.

If the UK would like to exceed the EU measures, the way forward is clear: the UK could easily adopt European Right to Repair measures and extend access to spare parts and repair information to all consumers, not just professional repairers.

Ultimately, if we do not adopt European standards as a minimum, what mechanisms are in place to ensure we do not become a dumping ground of sub-standard products?

Doubts about the UK “doing better”

We have some new doubts about the UK’s sincerity about “doing better” than Europe, as this week after failing to meet electronic waste collection targets, Defra announced it would simply lower them. According to trusted industry insiders, this “appears to signal a decision not to be bound by EU targets as we go through the Brexit transition phase”.

If we cannot be serious about the collection of electronic waste, what hope is there to prevent waste upstream?

We will be focusing on building pressure here in the UK for strong commitments post-Brexit, with allies and community groups who have signed The Manchester Declaration.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I have always been interested in doing things for myself instead of just letting the nearest guy/tradesperson to do it for me. I did basic maintenance on my motorcycle as a teenager, my favourite birthday present from my dad was a socket set which I still have. Amongst becoming “semi skilled” at work, my job involved solving simple faults with the machine I ran, so I guess that gave me the confidence to try my hand at electronics too. I have also done decorating, making shelves (from old pallet wood), and plumbing (replacing taps and part of the piping). The only thing I wouldn’t attempt is anything to do with gas. I hate the thought of any kind of waste, so will always try to fix something before replacing it, and if not will then try and find a second use for it, if possible. That hasn’t been any electrical items as yet though.

When did you start repairing electronics and electricals?

I can’t remember if I fixed anything electrical before replacing the battery in my iPhone 3G S. I managed that ok but not the re-assembly of the camera connection, as it no longer worked. Before I got around to opening it again to try and correct that the home button started to go so I bought a new phone. I still have it though and use it as an ipod now.

Why do you attend Restart Parties (or Repair Cafes)?

I not only like being able to try and fix things but love the ethos of the Restart Project to encourage and help the customers to fix their things themselves too.

I especially like to encourage women, Rosie the Restarter parties are great as it helps more women realise we can fix things too.

What is your favourite kind of repair?

Until I’m more skilled, I will say when something at first looks like it would be completely out of my skill set but I give it a go anyway, and turns out to be a simple fix. Like when I decided to remove my built in oven to replace the split grill element. The electrical connections were just push on, the hardest part was getting the screws done up as the holes on the new element housing didn’t quite lined up with the oven housing holes.

What do you do when you are not Restarting?

I recently left work after 31 years in the same company, so I am currently enjoying the easy life. I am going through all the bits and pieces I have collected through the years with the intent to work out what I do and do not need and so not to buy so much in the future.

What frustrates you (in life)?

It saddens me when people assume that they can’t do something without even giving it a go. But what frustrates me the most is those that tell others that they aren’t capable or to discourage them from trying. Unfortunately, women and girls seem to get this nearly all our lives.

And badly designed items that are not fit for purpose, the worst king of waste.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

An alarm in another room. I have been surprisingly good since leaving work, and get up at the same time every single day. I used to have long lay ins at the weekends.

What’s the first thing – one material thing – that you could not live without? (besides oxygen, food, water, and shelter and medical care)

It’s not exactly a material thing, but I think I would be very unhappy if I was told I couldn’t drink beer anymore, it’s more than a beverage to me, it’s a hobby and intend to brew my own when I have more space.

If that doesn’t count, it would have to be my phone due to the amount of things they can do now and help with.

Share something cool with us

YouTube tutorial videos. I don’t think I would have got into fixing electricals without them. I hardly attempt anything without first watching one. Even if they are rubbish, the fact that someone has made a video gives me the confidence as they think the average person is capable of doing it too.

London has the scale and the opportunity to be one of the leading cities in the promotion of reuse and repair of electricals and electronics, the prevention of e-waste, and recycling.

London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB) asked us last year to review its “roadmap for circular economy of electricals” and to analyse best practices in Europe. LWARB has now published an executive summary of this research.

As a part of our research, we interviewed local authorities, reuse organisations, professional repairers, businesses and the waste industry. We identified a range of opportunities to increase reuse, repair and recycling in London. Crucially many raised the environmental harm caused by e-waste and the continuing level of disposal of e-waste to landfill and incineration.

Drawing from our interviews and research of best practices across Europe, we have developed recommendations to implement such approaches here in London.

Download report

What we found in London

London should invest in these key priorities:

1. Learning from what works best in different local authorities and roll out uniform metrics to assess the increase of overall waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) collections across London, while monitoring the levels of electricals in residual waste.
2. Improving communication to Londoners about how to and where to repair, reuse and recycle electricals and electronics.
3. Celebrating and supporting the work of London’s huge range of community organisations, vibrant charity retail and re-use organisations, as well as commercial repairers and startups working on electricals.
4. Increasing the public’s awareness of the positive role that re-use, repair and extended product lifespans will play in a low-carbon economy.

Learning for London from the UK and Europe

After an extensive review of initiatives across Europe, we focused on six key examples which were selected as case studies. These included Millor Que Nou (Barcelona, Spain), De Kringwinkel (Flanders, Belgium), the E-Waste Race (Netherlands), Repair Network Vienna, Tech Takeback (Brighton and Hove) and Scotland’s sustainable procurement.

These cases gave us valuable insights into the provision and promotion of reuse and repair services, the development of innovative collection services, and the impact of policy and legislative frameworks.

And we drew from them some key learnings which should inform London’s future actions, including the importance of measuring outcomes like social inclusion and education when evaluating reuse and repair projects, as well as the importance of collaboration between initiatives to work at different scales. We also highlighted the power of awareness-raising, given that many consumers are still unsure of what to do with unwanted electricals.

Objectives for system change

The overall vision of LWARB in London for a “transition to the circular economy in the electricals sector” aims to

send zero electricals to disposal (landfill or incineration), act as a regional electricals hub for collection, re-use and recycling, and re-use more electrical gadgets in the capital

This level of ambition requires system change that can’t be achieved by any organisation on its own, also due to the limited funding available for the electrical sector – which continues not to be a top priority.

Our review proposes that London set the following objectives to focus the delivery of the vision:

1. Advocate for policies enabling the circular economy transition, starting with the review of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for the WEEE sector.
2. Lead by example through public procurement, ensuring it includes repair and reuse.
3. Encourage actions by local authorities to mobilise stored domestic WEEE for re-use and recycling.
4. Support the establishment of a knowledge-sharing group including charities, re-use organisations, community repair and circular economy businesses to promote re-use and repair in the capital.
5. Develop a communications campaign to promote London-wide opportunities for re-use and repair.
6. Continue to support small and medium businesses to transition to circular economy business models in the electrical sector.
7. Support the delivery of a local communications campaign on WEEE recycling, in line with the upcoming national campaign to be run by the WEEE Fund.
8. Support emerging good practice from local authorities on WEEE recycling.

We’ve also emphasised that LWARB should promote and support work by community organisations, charities and businesses, to help deliver its vision, for example by exploring the feasibility of creating a London repair network and by developing a London-wide repair directory.

Links

• LWARB 
• LWARB Route Map 2017
• CircE project

Thank you

We’re grateful to the team of researchers who worked with us on this project, in particular to James Diamond, who led on the research, and to Lara Houston, who was in charge of the case studies.