Repairs are expensive because of extreme economies of scale. The marginal cost for Samsung to make another injection-moulded plastic front face for a washing ma

Repairs are expensive because of extreme economies of scale. The marginal cost for Samsung to make another injection-moulded plastic front face for a washing machine is literally a few cents, including both material and labor; the cost for repairing it (no matter how repairable the materials are) or making a single new one in any other way than a mass-produced injection mold is easily at least 100 times more expensive, simply because it takes uncomparably more labor. This is a part where making and storing a huge excess of stock for the next 50 years is still cheaper than repairing even a tiny fraction of the parts. Perhaps requiring the manufacturers to provide either spare parts or if they are out of stock and no intent to sell them anymore, then requiring to provide STLs to 3D-print them could be a reasonable option. It still would be an order of magnitude (or two) more expensive compared to making the original parts (due to the immense economies of scale for plastic manufacturing), but it would still be cheaper than custom repairs locally.