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SparkStormrider t1_ixemoxe wrote

Reply to comment by SirEDCaLot in iFixit put up a Right to Repair billboard on the New York Governor's drive to work by kwiens

I firmly agree. The amount of e-waste is staggering where I am in a rural area, can only imagine what it's like for a city. The fact that we even need to discuss "Right to Repair" tells us something is definitely wrong, not to mention screwed up, with our legal system.

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SirEDCaLot t1_ixepifl wrote

It's not just the legal system. It's the whole economy.

Apple makes their billions selling everyone a new iPhone every year. So does Samsung and everyone else. If the machine is repairable (vs being just glued together as a solid lump of epoxy), it adds to the manufacturing cost, which means either less profits or higher price (and less sales). So it's easier to just say 'it's broken and it can't be fixed, throw it in the garbage and buy a new one' and everyone except the consumer makes more money that way.

Thus everyone has a drawer somewhere with an old phone that has a broken screen or a worn out battery or some other ailment that would be entirely fixable, if it was fixable.

On a societal scale though you're talking literally thousands of truckloads of broken phones and gadgets, many of which could be fixed if they were designed to be fixed. Or which could be fixed but the owner didn't want to decide between an overpriced 'authorized repair' and a cheap but 'unsafe' 'unwarranted' 3rd party fix.
And they all end up in 3rd world countries where little kids split them apart and boil the circuit boards in acid to strip the gold plating off the contacts.

I think the disease goes even deeper though. Look at clothing for example. Gotta keep up with the trend, gotta buy new outfits every year. The old ones are still perfectly good but because some asshole designer says they are out of fashion, they're no good. So they all go in the trash and we grow more cotton and make more synthetics to make more clothes to replace the perfectly good ones we already had because they were last year's color.

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Jaivez t1_ixfuvzi wrote

> If the machine is repairable (vs being just glued together as a solid lump of epoxy), it adds to the manufacturing cost

This isn't even the truth of it though. Nothing about proposed right to repair regulations is about forcing companies to make changes to how a device is manufactured to make them repairable. It's about preventing companies from putting up roadblocks like permanently pairing a part to a specific device, preventing manufacturers from forcing suppliers to make parts or support software unavailable to third parties, and otherwise preventing companies from making the only option the manufacturer for after-sale support. Their manufacturing costs would actually go down, as they spend R&D and other resources creating these controls.

It does mean that their revenue will drop as people make use of repair options, but that's tangential and honestly not something that consumers should care about at all. All in all, the thing that RTR hopes to achieve is giving consumers the option to repair themselves, or use third party repair shops. For how much people hate capitalism it's wild how okay people are with what the state of the industry is when it comes to their preferred brands considering they don't even have to make use of it.

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BumderFromDownUnder t1_ixh7x47 wrote

The only problem with what you’ve just said is both fixing the screen and replacing the battery are both doable. The treason they aren’t in some cases is because of software blocks, not because of how they’re manufactured.

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SirEDCaLot t1_ixhqd7u wrote

Oh for sure. But I suspect if they could get away with it both Apple and Samsung would fill their casings with epoxy.

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Lordnerble t1_ixg7mol wrote

I wish recycling was easier in cities. I try to recycle when I can. But regulations and fees make it stupid. No wonder people just dump that shit on the side of the road and in alleys. Need more areas to have free for all recycling or reuse programs. No fees no stupid rules

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my3sgte t1_ixfhm4q wrote

We talk about this at work quite a bit - about cheap electronics and how things are made to be just thrown away now :/ …sad….

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