Empowering Sustainable Consumption by Giving Back to Consumers the ‘Right to Repair’

Abstract

Industry has been considered a major actor regarding the actions and changes needed to achieve sustainable development. Different approximations to the topic have been developed to face the challenges of having a more responsible production of goods and services. These approximations include cleaner production, green design, ecodesign, eco efficiency, design for sustainable behavior, sustainable design, and more recently concepts like circular economies among many more. In all these approaches, the attention has been mainly on the production side while consumption has been tackled indirectly. The majority of laws and ordinances that have motivated the emergence of these approaches have traditionally been oriented to producers. However, an European Union (EU) directive launched in October 2019, called “right to repair”, could change this paradigm, empowering consumers by giving them more possibilities of repairing their products instead of discarding them. This paper presents a preliminary discussion about the effects this directive might have on how we consume products now and how we will consume them in the future.

A brave new world: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for transitioning to sustainable supply and production

“…Such legal guidelines would mean that users would not suffer adverse legal consequences when trying to repair products by, for example, fashioning replacement parts using 3D printing technologies. This shift would help to alleviate durability problems caused by the tendency of manufacturers to design products for premature obsolesce while encouraging greater reuse, recycling, and reclamation of products and components (Slade, 2006;Hernandez et al, 2020).…”

Thirty years of design for sustainability: an evolution of research, policy and practice

“…In terms of the relationship between the area of design for sustainability and the development of the concept of the circular economy, there are recent directives and laws that will push forward this connection. Examples of these directives and laws are represented by the recent interest in the EU on increasing the rate and capacity to repair products with the 'Right to Repair' Initiative (Hernandez, Miranda & Goñi 2020), the French Law on Circular Economy oriented to reduce the consumption of plastics and encouraging reuse and recycling (Légifrance 2020), and the EU Circular Economy Action Plan (European Commission 2020), amongst others around world. All these initiatives, directives and laws will have an influence on how design for sustainability will evolve in the future, and in what the direction will be in research to explore the transfer of public policies to industrial actions.…”

“…Consumers that want to know how their products work and how they can repair and renovate their products rather than throwing them away. Cafe Repair Shops and new directives mainly in the EU will give a push to this socio-technical trend that will affect design and design for sustainability in many ways (Hernandez, Miranda & Goñi 2020). Other approaches that are emerging from consumers and grass roots organizations, rather than industry, is a focus of more low tech approaches such as simplicity and open design.…”

The Right to Customization: Conceptualizing the Right to Repair for Informational Privacy

“…For example, Apple restricts consumers' ability to repair their devices through requiring the use of specific tools or authorized parts [61]. Against this backdrop, individuals, activists, and academics have called for manufacturers to design their products in such a way as to facilitate their repair [40]. These calls have meanwhile been heard by policymakers and the right to repair has emerged in legislation on both sides of the Atlantic [53][72] [36].…”