Whilst the EU's war on waste and reparability legislation may be looked at through rose tinted glasses I think it has a number of negative side effects. 1) cos

Whilst the EU's war on waste and reparability legislation may be looked at through rose tinted glasses I think it has a number of negative side effects. 1) cost: The reason goods are cheap is that companies can rely on you needing to replace them ever [3] years. If you start to make it such that they only need to be replaced every [9] years then a manufacturer may only be able to rely on one third of the revenue. This has two effects - less money to go around for innovation / development (resulting in less good technology), and higher cost of goods (impacting the poorest the most). 2) livelihoods: The higher level thing going on here is that consumption of goods has raised living standards for many people around the world. On the other side of every good purchased are the livelihoods of people working in whole supply chains to produce that good. Reducing consumption will mean that those making all the things we consume will have less take home income for themselves (again, probably impacting the poor the most). It is a bit of a sad fact that the best way we have of organising society where people may gain a sense of dignity and meaning in their lives is through pushing consumption. 3) cost of business: all these rules and regulations are expensive to comply with. The EU will legislate itself to a bureaucratic death. My view in general of regulation is that it is designed to protect the interests of the wealthy, or those most willing to make a cost versus quality of life / fuzzy feel goods trade off. If replacing the battery was really that big a deal to consumers then people would buy a phone that had a hot-swappable battery - i.e. no need for regulation! Having said all that, I find the EU legislation mandating vampire power drain from not-in-use chargers is probably something i'd be on board with. This has the somewhat unique property that literally no one cares about something costs 0.1EUR a year, but it adds up at a country scale. I'm not entirely sure why i'm on board with this though.