The Recycler issue 339

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FEATURE Fix it or recycle it? David Connett, Partner at Connett & Unland GbR talks repairs and reuse, rather than recycling. ▲ David Connett, Partner, Connett & Unland GbR When I was elevenish I wanted to listen to the pirate Radio Caroline, but my parents were more fans of the BBC “Home Service.” Not to be outwitted, I spent four weeks pocket money and built my own radio set tuned to Radio Caroline and listened through some old army headphones I bought in a secondhand shop. I guess that was the starting point of my engineering career making, fixing and repairing all things electronic. Since the mid-sixties when I built my radio, the art of repair has slipped from our conscious in Europe. We consume and dispose of working technology because the battery is flat, or there is newer faster, sleeker technology available. The art of repair has diminished and there is a price to pay for the ease of consumption. The tide is turning as politicians realise that repairing is better than recycling. According to the right to Repair organisation: • Over 200 million smartphones are sold in Europe every year. • That’s 6.7 sold every second • On average they last 2 years which is 3 years less than what people would like them to last. • Extending the lifetime of all smartphones in the EU by 1 year would save 2.1 Mt CO2 per year by 2030, the equivalent of taking over a million cars off the roads. • Sticking with smartphones, a 200 gram phone generates during its production, including all stages of mining and manufacture, 86kg of “invisible waste”. • Europe is the largest generator of electronic waste per person in the world. Each person produces on average 16 kg each year. • While our electronics are filled with gold, copper and aluminium, as well as “critical raw materials” we recover Less than 6%. Rare earth elements like neodymium have nearly insignificant rates of recycling. And I could fill this entire edition of facts and figures about wasted technology, but I think you have the gist of the message. The tide is turning as politicians realise that repairing is better than recycling. The European Parliament recently voted in favour of making products more durable and easier to repair and recycle, to boost sustainability and tackling practices that shorten the lifespan of products. They also insist on increasing support for secondhand goods markets, call for measures to tackle practices that shorten the lifetime of a product, and endorse sustainable production. FEATURED A R TIC L E Javier Martinez, President of ETIRA, said: “A stronger reuse and second-hand goods market for imaging consumables can create thousands more jobs across Europe and, to see the Parliament’s call for measures to tackle practices that shorten the lifetime of a product, while endorsing sustainable production, is fantastic.” 36 Issue 339 February 2021
Search for The Recycler on Facebook for more news and industry coverage In the UK a parliamentary committee recommended the right to repair should be enshrined into law, ensuring access to repair manuals, to affordable spare parts and the ability to repair products without repairers needing access to physical or software tools specifically designed to be a barrier to independent servicing or repair. In the printer market one of the major barriers is the lack of spare parts and the short life that OEMs will support a printer. It is not unusual for a printer model to be withdrawn within two or three years and supported for a further two years. Yet it is not uncommon for a five year old printer to only have printed 20% of its potential pages and will still have many years of good printing ahead of it. If it can be repaired and supported. An end to firmware lockouts? Among the recommendations made by the MEP’s was the need for corrective updates – i.e. security and conformity updates – to continue throughout the estimated lifespan of the device, according to product category. They also recommended that corrective updates should be kept separate from evolutive updates, which must be reversible, and no update must ever diminish the performance or responsiveness of the goods. Ken Lalley, CEO of Static Control commented: “Our thousand plus European customers are vested in the reuse of imaging consumables and would welcome reversible firmware updates that often lock out reused consumables and frustrate consumers.” Moving forward, in the 1 st January this year, France implemented a repair index on smartphones, TVs, laptops, washing machines and lawn mowers to inform consumers of how repairable a product is. Expect this to roll out across Europe over the next few years. ■ In the printer market one of the major barriers is the lack of spare parts and the short life that OEMs will support a printer. 24 – 26 May, 2021 Dubai World Trade Centre, UAE Office & School Book your stand now in our dedicated REMAN Expo pavilion and capitalize on the Middle East and Africa market 10 th Anniversary Look beyond paper Contact us: paperworld@uae.messefrankfurt.com Play & Creative Issue 339 February 2021 37
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