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There are substantial externalities to commercializing products that cannot be repaired. Fantastic amounts of non-biodegradable waste, overconsumption of nonren
by actionablefiber 4y ago
There are substantial externalities to commercializing products that cannot be repaired. Fantastic amounts of non-biodegradable waste, overconsumption of nonrenewable material resources, and of course financial loss to consumers and opportunity cost to the secondary market. "Just choose not to buy the product" is only sensible if choosing not to buy the product fully insulates you from the effects of its existence.
Regulation places the cost of those externalities and/or the responsibility to prevent them back in the lap of the manufacturer.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y agoCouldn’t recyclability and repairability be mutually independent, though? It sounds possible to me that a product that is not highly repairable could still be highly recyclable just because its shattered parts can still be reprocessed into new products.
- actionablefiber 4y agoRepairability and reusability precede recyclability in effectiveness. Anything you can take to a shop to swap a broken part, or list on a secondary market as a "fixer upper phone" beat out whatever Apple's internal recycling process does.