By Yetta Jager, Green Sanctuary Committee
Key principles to reduce our environmental impact include the 5 R’s, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, and Recycle. In that order. Earlier this month, we practiced the most important strategy by Refusing to buy plastic. In this blog, we discuss the strategy of Repair.
We live in a throw-away society mainly because labor costs far exceed material costs. This is good for workers, but not so great for the environment. For many who are working, our time is more valuable than our money. In the ‘good-old-days,’ car repairs ranging from oil changes to part replacements were done by their owners, holey socks were darned, buttons were reattached, and ripped clothing was repaired. We stopped going to the friendly, local shoe repair and alterations stores, unwilling to pay for repairs, and instead buying new ‘fast fashion’ with labor of questionable provenance. And manufacturers design for planned obsolescence. I was shocked to learn that the waterproof lining in raincoats delaminates and starts peeling within 7 years, contributing microplastics to waste water.
Industries have capitalized on electronic components in their manufactured products by making it more difficult for others to repair their products, or even voiding warrantees for those trying to do their own fixes. Parts pairing, the practice of using software to identify component parts through a unique identifier, is a relatively new threat infringing on a consumer’s right to repair. Manufacturers use parts pairing to prevent access to repair or confuse the consumer about a third-party repair’s efficacy. One of the worst examples is in health care. During the COVID-19 epidemic, hospitals were not allowed to fix respirators that failed, but the manufacturer was overwhelmed.
New legislation as part of the Right-to-Repair movement is fighting this trend toward monopolizing repairs. At the national scale, the Medical Infrastructure Right-to-Repair Act of 2020 was passed to address medical equipment repairs. At the state level, the Consumers Union reports that more than 30 different laws were proposed in 2023-24 state legislatures to protect a consumer’s right to repair the digital products they own (see https://www.repair.org/). In many states, including ours https://tennessee.repair.org/, legislation to allow repair of tractors and other farm equipment has been introduced.
Are there opportunities for you to repair and reuse consumer products? Can we choose products that have a reputation for longevity? When things break, can we fix them (perhaps with the help of a YouTube video)? Finally, consider supporting right-to-repair legislation through the efforts of the Consumers Union and the Digital Right to Repair Coalition.
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