30. iFixit This! Why We Need the Right to Repair

The conversation explores the concept of Right to Repair and its impact on the circular economy. Right to Repair is the idea that consumers should have the ability to fix the products they own, and manufacturers should not be able to block repair or limit it to authorized repair shops. The movement has gained momentum globally, with several US states and countries passing right to repair laws. These laws typically require manufacturers to share parts, tools, and repair documentation with independent repair shops and device owners. The long-term impact of right to repair includes reducing e-waste, extending product lifespans, and promoting a more sustainable approach to electronics.


Takeaways

• Right to Repair is a movement that advocates for the ability to fix everything you own and prevents manufacturers from blocking repair.
• More US states and countries are passing right to repair legislation, which requires manufacturers to share parts, tools, and repair documentation with independent repair shops and device owners.
• Right to Repair contributes to a circular economy by promoting reuse and extending the lifespan of products, reducing e-waste and carbon emissions.
• The impact of Right to Repair includes creating business opportunities and changing the way we think about our products and consumption.

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Transcript

Stephanie McLarty (00:57.624)
More US states and countries are working on and passing right to repair bills. So what is right to repair and how will this movement contribute to a circular economy? Welcome to the circular future, your access to thought leaders and innovations to help you be a business sustainability champion, even if it's not your core job. I'm your host, Stephanie McClarty, head of sustainability at Quantum Lifecycle Partners.

Right to Repair was not something on many people's radars until just recently. Now it seems like a movement and one with significant momentum that will help us all to reuse more products in our businesses and personal lives. With me to unpack Right to Repair is Elizabeth Chamberlain, Director of Sustainability at iFixit. Liz had... sorry.

Liz heads iFixit's global advocacy for right to repair, fighting for more repair -friendly laws and regulations around the United States. Her writing on repair has been published in Wired, Motherboard, and the Wall Street Journal. So welcome to the podcast, Liz.

Liz Chamberlain (02:13.028)
Thank you, great to be here.

Stephanie McLarty (02:14.872)
I'm really excited to cover this topic because we are talking about it at Quantum as something that we think is really going to redefine the space. But I know there's a ton of questions around it, so I'm really excited that you're here. The first thing I want to ask you is what we ask everyone, and that is to peek inside your world. So Liz, what would be three things that the world wouldn't know about iFixit?

Liz Chamberlain (02:41.476)
Well, so we are the world's largest free repair manual. We've got 100 ,000 guides for how to fix everything from toasters to tractors. They're all Wiki editable. So if you see something in a guide that seems wrong, you can make changes yourself. Two is that we sell parts and tools for repairing electronics. And three is that we recently worked with Lenovo to get the latest ThinkPad model up to a nine out of 10.

repairability scores. It's one of the most repairable products on the laptop market. It's one of their most repairable products on the laptop market. And it's also one of the best selling products on the laptop market. So we're really excited to be working with them on such a flagship model of laptop.

Stephanie McLarty (03:30.552)
That's really amazing. And just for perspective, iFixit has been around for a while, right? Long before the Right to Repair movement.

Liz Chamberlain (03:39.332)
Yeah, we started in 2003 when our co -founder was a college student in computer science at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and dropped an iBook off his dorm room bed, bent the power plug, couldn't find a guide for how to fix it, and so wrote a guide himself, took it apart, put it online, and it turned out a lot of other people had the same problem, wanted to be able to repair Apple products and couldn't.

Stephanie McLarty (04:03.32)
That's a really cool story. And I know for me personally, I couldn't do that. I couldn't repair it, but there's a ton of people and like a huge swath of people that do want to repair. We'll get into that. But first let's talk about this movement called Right to Repair. So what exactly is Right to Repair?

Liz Chamberlain (04:22.884)
Right to Repair is the idea that you should be able to fix everything you own and that manufacturers shouldn't be able to block that. They shouldn't be able to limit repair to their own authorized repair shops because that decreases competition in their fair market, makes repairs harder to get and more expensive for everybody.

Stephanie McLarty (04:42.264)
Yeah, and it seems so much these days that electronics are single use items. Use it for a bit, it breaks, and then you don't know what to do with it. And in this case, this is all about solving that problem, right? Giving access to the resources. So in a right to repair bill, what is changing going forward?

Liz Chamberlain (05:02.244)
So it depends on the bill itself. And there have been a bunch of different approaches to right to repair laws around the world. In the US, most of the right to repair laws that we've worked on have been aimed at requiring manufacturers to share parts, tools, and repair documentation with independent repair shops, that is, you know, the shops that they don't run, and with owners of devices.

Stephanie McLarty (05:26.2)
Okay, very cool. And let's walk back a little bit. Tell us a bit about the history about how this actually came about and really gained momentum over the years.

Liz Chamberlain (05:36.036)
Yeah, yeah. So the first legislation called right to repair legislation was actually an automotive right to repair bill in Massachusetts that passed in 2012. And it required that manufacturers of cars provide parts, tools, and documentation to independent repair shops. And when the auto manufacturers were looking at the passage of that bill, they worked with the aftermarket

car parts people to extend that as a nationwide agreement. So since 2012, most repair shops, car repair shops around the United States have had the capacity to get the parts tools and documentation they need. Our co -founder, Kyle, saw this law pass and said, wow, that's a great idea. We need that in electronics. And was talking about this with the...

somebody who'd recently left the server industry at a server industry conference. And she'd had a lot of complaints about server repair. You know, that manufacturers were limiting access to repair parts, tools and documentation and driving up the cost of repairs for server equipment and stuff was being trashed sooner than it needed to be. And, you know, we, at iFixit had seen exactly the same problem in consumer electronics. So, Kyle and Gay, who's the...

now the head of repair .org teamed up and said, hey, let's make this happen in electronics. And so in 2014, they took the Massachusetts auto repair bill, fined and replaced, they took out the word automotive, replaced it with electronics and tried to run that bill in Nebraska.

Stephanie McLarty (07:24.344)
Okay. And so that was 2014. And let's fast forward to 2024, you know, 10 years later, actually, where are we at now? Like what states and which countries have either worked on right to repair or actually gone to the next level and passed these bills?

Liz Chamberlain (07:43.108)
Yeah, yeah. So 48 of 50 US states have had some sort of right to repair legislation introduced. Seven states have passed something. So New York, Minnesota, Oregon, California, Colorado all have laws covering electronics. Maine and Massachusetts have automotive right to repair. And Colorado also has right to repair powered wheelchairs and right to repair farm equipment.

Outside of the US, several laws have passed in the EU. There's a right to repair directive that just passed last month that will require that manufacturers share parts, tools, and documentation with independent repair shops. It also puts some pricing controls. It says that manufacturers have to make parts available at a reasonable price that doesn't deter repair. And some other places have been even more aggressive.

France has a repairability score that has to be published at the point of sale for products. It's similar to the repairability scores that I fix it has been publishing. And the EU also will require by 2027 that all products with batteries, all portable products with batteries have to have user replaceable batteries. So we're seeing some big changes around the world.

Stephanie McLarty (09:11.384)
And what's happening in Canada specifically too? Can you speak to that?

Liz Chamberlain (09:14.948)
Yeah, yeah. So there are two right to repair bills in consideration in Canada right now. One of them would address some copyright issues around repair. So some repairs are blocked by manufacturers not making parts and tools available. And some of them are blocked by software where...

you know, either there's a code you have to put in that's only available to the manufacturer or, you know, you can't complete a repair unless you bought a part directly through a manufacturer. There's some sort of, you know, software linkage of the part to the part serial number, excuse me, the product serial number. And to get around those blocks, you know, you basically have to hack into the device. You have to, you know, get around the software.

And that's illegal at a federal level in Canada. It's also illegal at a federal level in the US. There is a bill right now in California, C244, that would address that problem, that would make it legal for individuals to get around those kinds of software blocks for the purposes of repair. There's also a bill that...

that addresses interoperability of parts. So it's got some sort of overlap, but it looks specifically at, you know, in farm equipment, especially this is a problem where manufacturers of farm equipment will make it so that you can't use, you know, different computers or different parts with the computer that you bought through them. And the so -called interoperability bill would make it so that you can...

use any kind of part with a device.

Stephanie McLarty (11:04.632)
It's so interesting. I can imagine that a lot of manufacturers might not be too keen on something like right to repair because it might impede their new sales. Is that true? Have you been seeing a lot of pushback from manufacturers and how have they overcome some of those challenges that they bring up, say around, you know, this is giving access to potentially our intellectual property? How is right to repair address that?

Liz Chamberlain (11:30.852)
Yeah, yeah. The biggest resistance we've gotten has definitely been from manufacturers. Right to Repair pulls very, very popularly around the world. 70 % plus of people, every time it's pulled, support Right to Repair because it's such a common sense idea. If you own something, you should be able to fix it. Historically, we've had a lot of pushback from manufacturers.

As time has gone on, we've started to see a shift though in the way that they approach it. I think part of that is that, as legislation has started to pass, they've started to look at how they can make this a business opportunity instead of a threat to their business model. And so we've actually, we've started having some manufacturers work really closely with us on right to repair legislation. So, to our surprise after spending

more than a million dollars around the US fighting right to repair, Apple actually came on in support in California. We came to a point in negotiation where they were able to support the bill. They have since gone on to fight other right to repair bills in Oregon and Colorado, but we had their support in California.

And Google has come on and support around the world. They're working with us really closely and they're fully committed to the idea that electronics should be more repairable.

Stephanie McLarty (13:10.008)
Mm hmm. Yeah. And like there's this movement that it's happening now, as I mentioned off the top, like there is momentum here. And it seems like, you know, every month there's something new, new bills being passed, new progress being made. So it's nice to see the manufacturers in some cases or a lot of cases are now starting to get on board and support this. And and I've heard I've seen some of the business opportunities out of it, like offering new services around repair so that

they can embrace this as part of their business model. You've mentioned a couple of different product types. So this isn't something necessarily for all electronics. Like a quantum we say we can recycle or resell ITAD -wise, anything with a battery or a plug, anything like electronics. In this case, at least at this time, it seems like it's more product specific based on the location. Is that true? Or is it, are you seeing locations actually embrace any type of electronic?

Liz Chamberlain (14:09.316)
Yeah, it does depend on the bill itself. In Europe, the right to repair legislation is limited to a fairly narrow set of product categories. It's products covered by eco design regulations. So right now that's laptops, cell phones, tablets, washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, and a few other things. The US legislation has, broadly speaking, been broader.

most of the right to repair bills that have passed in the US apply to digital electronics, anything that has a chip. So similar to like you were saying, anything with a battery or that can be charged. Each state has a slightly different set of exceptions. There's a lot of overlap in the exceptions. Police radios are excluded everywhere.

Stephanie McLarty (14:49.912)
Mm -hmm.

Liz Chamberlain (15:07.46)
alarm systems are excluded. No video game consoles, which is frustrating to us as a movement. I think absolutely video game consoles should be able to be repaired and there's no reason that they should be different from other kinds of electronics. That's because there are some controls on the hardware of video games that are designed to stop piracy and stop cheating.

that manufacturers have not technically found a way around yet. Haven't found a way to make it so that you can change out an optical drive without damaging the system to prevent piracy and cheating. So we think that laws should cover video game consoles and we're going to continue pushing for that. But so far they've succeeded in getting excluded.

from right to repair laws.

Stephanie McLarty (16:08.44)
So it's TBD, if you will. Okay. What do you think the impact of this will be? My colleague Clayton Miller once said the term, he thinks this will prime the whole supply chain for reuse. And we see reuse on our side as both electronics recyclers and ITAD providers. So IT asset disposition or IT asset disposition.

and where we reuse and remarket electronics as something that when we can reuse something, we can keep it at its higher value, it's worth more, but environmentally too, we now have a calculator where we can see that it saves a lot of emissions over even recycling something. So environmentally, it makes total sense. What do you think the long -term impact of right to repair will be?

Liz Chamberlain (17:04.644)
The environmental impact is huge. The best thing that we can do as a global society to slow the tide of e -waste is to slow down our consumption, to make products last longer, keep them in use longer. Our friends at the Public Interest Research Group did a study that found that if Americans on average kept their cell phones one year longer, it would be the carbon equivalent of taking 636 ,000 cars off the road.

And that's just one product, right? If we changed our approach to electronics in general and kept laptops for longer and monitors for longer and everything for longer, it could make a dramatic difference in the carbon emissions impact. go ahead, sorry.

Stephanie McLarty (17:52.728)
And what do you think, I'm sorry. And what do you think too, a lot of our listeners are business managers or leaders, you know, they work in IT, they work in procurement and operations. What do you think the impact will be for them and their businesses? Like, will they be able to repair their own products more, I suppose? What do you think the impact will be?

Liz Chamberlain (18:17.156)
Yeah, we're pushing for more and more of these laws to cover enterprise equipment. The Minnesota bill and the Colorado bill that is sitting on the governor's desk should be signed soon, hopefully. Both of those bills explicitly include enterprise equipment, business to business equipment, server equipment, that sort of thing. And I think it's really important that the

that business equipment be included because there's such a huge amount of it, number one. And number two, so many businesses have these contracts and these expectations that they will after a few years upgrade and upgrade everybody's machines, even if they're working, even if most of them are perfectly fine. And so I think right to repair legislation can make sure that at a, you know, at a,

company scale parts are available so that equipment can last longer. That software isn't restricting the repair of those things. And another sort of piece of the puzzle is security updates and functional updates. We pushed really hard for companies to extend the support of their.

their software and I think that's hugely important to extension of product lifespans at an IT asset disposition scale.

Stephanie McLarty (19:55.224)
Mm -hmm. And I think what's really cool about Right to Repair too is that it opens up opportunities on so many levels. So if a company wants to, for example, do their own repair on their devices, if they've got that capability to extend the lifespan of their device, great. If an individual does, if they're interested in that and they want to repair it themselves, great. I know for me personally,

For me personally, I'm not technical, so I wouldn't do it, but my husband totally would. And it's just going to open up all these different opportunities for repair, probably more independent service providers too, being able to offer services simply because they've got access to these resources and the actual parts themselves. So I wanna move into now our rapid fire how -to section where I get to ask you how -to questions and you can answer either long or short, all up to you.

My first one is, and this one I think is really interesting and it impacts this whole space, which is how to design products that are actually repairable.

Liz Chamberlain (21:03.46)
This is something that we have begun working really closely with manufacturers on. So we worked with Lenovo on the new ThinkPad. We've worked with a number of other companies on designing more repairable products. The number one thing is that parts need to be modular. And that means that you need to be able to replace parts individually without them being tied inextricably to other parts. So you should be able to replace a keyboard without replacing the whole top case of the laptop.

you should be able to replace the screen without replacing the battery. And tied into that is that you need easy access to the parts that are most important to the functioning of the device and the parts that are most likely to break or go bad. And so in most electronics, that means screens and batteries are number one and number two. Screens often crack if you drop something. Batteries are consumables. They have a limited lifespan. So after three to 500 charge cycles usually, so that's...

usually somewhere between two and five years, the battery will stop holding a charge as well as it used to. And so if you want to keep the product in use, then you need to be able to change the battery. So parts need to be easily interchangeable. You need easy access to those priority parts. And then you need to be able to get inside the thing. You need repeatable fasteners. So that is, you know, screws ideally instead of glues where possible or...

you know, use use gaskets instead of glues. We the the company Fairphone, which which makes a modular repairable smartphone, just released the the first pair of wireless earbuds that we've given a 10 out of 10 repairability score to. And it's it is exciting because this is a space where, you know, you know, we've given a lot of zero out of tens to to to wireless earbuds. But.

Stephanie McLarty (22:47.928)
Wow.

Liz Chamberlain (22:59.172)
FairBuds has proven that you can make a waterproof, dust -proof earbud that uses gaskets instead of sealing in the battery entirely. And you can change the battery without any special tools. Just take off the gasket, pop the thing open, and swap out the easily replaceable battery.

Stephanie McLarty (23:26.392)
So I'm hopeful for product design as we move forward in this, that it will become more and more repairable. Okay, so let's build on that and how to make systems allow for repairability. Like what do we need to do to actually execute this on a systems level?

Liz Chamberlain (23:46.02)
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, once the once the laws pass, the the burden is on manufacturers to create repair ecosystems. And that means, you know, ideally not just sort of checking the box and, you know, setting up setting up a parts store, but also, you know, really supporting people around repair and thinking from a repair first perspective. So, you know, that means that means thinking about.

when they stop supporting a product, how do they make sure that their products don't just end up going immediately to e -waste? Can they make design files available so that people can 3D print spare parts, for instance? Can they set up software so that it degrades gracefully instead of just leaving people high and dry? Can they open source things at the end of a product's life so that the community can go in and keep maintaining things?

I think it's not just a matter of getting parts and tools in people's hands, but really thinking about repair from the beginning to the end of a product's lifespan.

Stephanie McLarty (24:58.84)
Right. And being a steward of repair is also what I hear as well. That's amazing. Yeah. Okay, last one. How to get involved in this? I mean, are there opportunities to get involved?

Liz Chamberlain (25:02.852)
Yeah, that's well put.

Liz Chamberlain (25:11.236)
Absolutely, yeah. So we work really closely with a number of right to repair advocacy organizations. So in the US, there's repair .org. In the EU, there's repair .eu. In Canada, there's canrepair .ca. And all of these organizations are working to support right to repair legislation and to push manufacturers to develop those repair ecosystems.

Stephanie McLarty (25:37.176)
Cool, we'll link all of those in the show notes as well so you can take advantage. This has been so insightful and I've had goosebumps multiple times during our conversation. Liz, if we could just wrap this up, could you give us one piece of advice that you'd leave listeners with regarding right to repair?

Liz Chamberlain (25:58.82)
Yeah, so we do a lot of work with manufacturers. We do a lot of work pushing for laws. But really the other piece of this is that we need a culture change. We need to change the way we think about our products and the stuff in our life. And that culture change starts with looking at a broken thing and thinking, hey, maybe I could fix this or maybe someone could fix this instead of, I guess it's time to upgrade. And so my encouragement to people would be,

to change the way you think when you encounter a broken thing. Think about how it could be fixed.

Stephanie McLarty (26:31.896)
And I just got goosebumps again. I love that. Thank you, Liz. This has been so insightful and I'm excited for the future. So I appreciate it. Cause I know that you and iFixit are a big reason that this is happening.

Liz Chamberlain (26:34.244)
Okay.

Liz Chamberlain (26:46.948)
It's been great chatting with you.

Stephanie McLarty (26:49.304)
And remember, if you're looking for a partner to help you repair, reuse, or recycle your electronics, we'd love to chat. Head on over to QuantumLifecycle .com and contact us. This is a Quantum Lifecycle podcast and the producer is Sanjay Trivedi. Thank you for being a circular future champion in your company and beyond. Logging off.