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posted by martyb on Monday July 06 2020, @06:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the Use-it-up.-Wear-it-out.-Make-do.-Do-without. dept.

Fixers Know What 'Repairable' Means—Now There's A Standard For It - Ifixit:

[Earlier this year], three years of arguing with industry finally paid off, as the European standard EN45554 was published. This official document with an unexciting name details "general methods for the assessment of the ability to repair, reuse and upgrade energy-related products." In plain English, it's a standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff. It's also a huge milestone for the fight for fair repair.

We want to repair the stuff we own, so we can use it for longer. This is not only important because we want our money's worth out of the things we paid for, but because manufacturing new products is a huge and underestimated driver of climate change. So if we want to avoid cooking our planet, we need to stop churning out disposable electronics and start repairing more. Like, right now.

The problem is, industry won't do this by itself. Managers get ahead by showing quarterly sales growth, not increased product lifespans. Hence we need the government to step in, banning unrepairable products and helping consumers—that's you!—to identify the most durable products out there, so as to empower them to make better purchasing decisions. And in the EU, our political leaders are getting ready to do so.

But here's the rub: those leaders don't know what a repairable product is. If you ask manufacturers, they will all tell you their products are repairable. If you ask us, some devices clearly are more repairable than others, and some are frankly just not repairable at all.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @03:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @03:48PM (#1017089)

    'tis probably a good thing to have this mentioned in them lawZ "somewhere".
    so much other crap has a law.
    now to be honest, what really is not repairable? i suppose we need to first define "working/not broken" and "broken".
    now we can go all the way dooooowwwnnn the rabbit hole and we would end up with a dilemma?
    we mostly define "working" stuff as stuff that didn't require something to break first, but did we?
    it seems stuff we buy is stuff we cannot make ourself or are to lazy to and it required somebody else to "break" something to get the "working stuff" we buy.
    maybe you can see where i am going: it required a energy input and material input/refining to get something "working". my guess is, that whatever "broke" to get your working product cannnot be repaired.
    ofc i yest and laws prefer a pi value of a solid 3 and not, you know printing a algo when defining pi.
    so anyways, mentioning the intent that stuff should be repairable, even if it's in the "pi equals 3" class, is a good thing.
    note: in a perfect world the consumer would DICTATE strongly if repairable or "non repairable devices are succesfull?

    on a more egoistical note: yeah, burn them manufacturers of phones that don't want to reveal "the secret" of the open source kernel based device after their randomly and arbitrarly set shut off date for updates. shhhiiit. it translates to: thanks for your free code; now we're adding stuff so you can help increase the landfill volume or have all your dirty secrets and bank accounts plundered (but not by our own most imformed sub devision of hackers punishing you for not slaving enough to buy a new device from us) in three years.
    also, devices that only function with a requirment of a connection to a mothership (controller) are required to reveal "the secret sauce" or face the requirement of having to eat each and every morsel dished up at the "starved to death pet" banquet IF they discard their right to carry responsibilty (they demanded in the first place).

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