Can they fix it? British project to explore the capacity and willingness to reform technology | technology

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From luxury toys to smartphones, when technology breaks down, it often seems easier to give it up for a new model.

But experts now hope to challenge the status quo, launch a citizen science project to explore reform situations, and identify parts of the UK where the reform mindset is thriving.

The major repair project comes on the heels of campaigns to reduce the huge amounts of electrical and electronic waste produced each year, as well as the environmental impact of new products, by ensuring that consumers can repair broken or damaged products – a rarity in the global consumer.

“It has gotten to the point where most products have ended up being put on the market without a real viable pathway to reform,” said Professor Mark Miodonic from University College London, who is leading the project.

Last year, new laws were passed in the UK on the “right to repair”, meaning that spare parts for a number of household items including washing machines and televisions must now be made available, and kept available for up to 10 years, depending on the part.

Meanwhile, companies like Microsoft and Apple recently announced their own moves to allow consumers to fix their technology.

“Obviously, the graffiti on the wall is actually from an environmental perspective, and from a market perspective, that’s the direction of travel,” Miodonic said.

But there was a backlash.

At the recent Roundtable event, hosted by the Royal Academy of Engineering and chaired by Miodownik, some manufacturers argued that people could be injured while trying to repair, that this approach could make it difficult to protect intellectual property, and that storing parts without trying to sell them was not necessarily in the company’s best interest.

Some manufacturers also said they are waiting for customer demand to produce products with less environmental impact.

Keeping products in use by increasing their longevity and repairability was one of the main ways to reduce the carbon footprint of products, said Laura Selten, of hardware maker Beko, adding that increasing the use of global parts was one area where the industry could work.

But one problem, she added, was that the cost of new hardware was now closer to the cost of repairing old hardware.

“Also at the point of purchase, consumers tend to pay more attention to the price, functionality, and aesthetics of devices than to their repairability,” she said.

Miodownik said the citizen science project was in part an attempt to explore whether the public really cares about the ability to reform products.

As part of a major repair project, participants will be asked to complete a survey of different devices, tools, and techniques, including how important it is to be able to repair them and how long they usually expect these items to last.

The team will also collect partial zip code data to gather information about when items are down, such as whether they were repaired and how much the operation cost, allowing researchers to gather accurate data on whether there are “repair hotspots” across the country.

“It is important for us, with the settlement agenda, to know if there is a thriving reform economy in a particular place,” Miodonic said.

“It’s important to stress that we’re interested in the things that people can’t fix because it’s too expensive, and whether that makes them frustrated,” he said.

The data can also provide an opportunity to test ideas about the impact of the approach.

“We have this hypothesis that reform is actually not just an economic good, an environmental good, but also a social good,” Miodonic said.

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