I know EU has the Right to Repair initiative and that’s a step to the right direction. Still I’m left to wonder, how did we end up in a situation where it’s often cheaper to just buy a new item than fix the old?
What can individuals, communities, countries and organizations do to encourage people to repair rather than replace with a new?
Mass production and volume discounting. A circuit board can have hundreds of resistors on it. If yours has one resistor go bad you can buy a new one and replace it. But do you think it’s reasonable for you to get that one resistor for the same unit price as the company that orders a hundred million resistors a month?
For one thing, your one resistor takes about the same amount of labour and shipping costs as a tape reel of 10 thousand resistors (about the size of a dinner plate). So you’re already paying 10 thousand times the unit price on shipping and handling for that one resistor! For a manufacturer it’s not even worth their time to sell you 1 resistor. So you end up going through potentially multiple intermediaries before you can buy just 1. Each level of middlemen adds to the cost for you.