RIGHT TO REPAIR
A big fight is happening world-wide to push governments to ensure people can repair the products they own.
“The right to repair refers to proposed government legislation to forbid manufacturers from imposing barriers that deny consumers the ability to repair and modify their own consumer products.” | Wikipedia
This is happening because of:
- Planned Obsolescence: companies are purposely building their products to break faster, so you have to pay to replace them sooner.
- Unfixable Products: some products will have their components soldered, glued, or riveted, to stop people from being able to repair.
- Brand-Specific Parts: These parts may cost more than buying a new product. As well as that, some companies refuse to let independent repair technicians purchase their parts to try and force costumers to only use the product company for repairs.
- Restrictive Programing. For these, the programs refuse to let you fix your own products (a large example of this happens to farm equipment, where farmers have to hack their own equipment if they want to repair on their own).
More Info:
REPAIR CAFES
Repair cafes are typically community-run events where volunteers gather to fix the broken items of strangers for free. My town started doing it a long time ago, and it was so popular that it now happens several times a year.
People bring in stand mixers, vacuums, computers, items that need sewing repairs, and more. Often, the person is very willing to explain the repairs as they do them.
In other places, repair cafes have become more permanent. For example, in Austria, the government started paying those who repair.
Repair cafes not only save people money, but they also can greatly reduce the amount of waste produced by saving those repaired items from the landfill.
More Info on Repair Cafes:
How do the repair cafes know what spare parts to have? Does your local area have a discussion about what items might be there beforehand?
They go off of who volunteers. For example, if a person who specializes in fixing stand mixers volunteers, that will be one of the tables people can visit. That repair person brings the parts (for example, there are a few parts in stand mixers that tend to break, so the repair person would know to bring fixes for those). I have also heard of repair cafe's elsewhere even bringing in 3D printers to help with part replacement.
Here is the text from a recent one in my town:
Items that are accepted at Repair Café events:
Items not allowed:
Very cool, thanks for clarifying