Right to repair.
A little bit over a year ago I had an issue with electrical wiring in our place which almost led to a major incident. Thankfully a technician responsible for maintaining the grid network caught it in time and, with the help of my friend, he made a fix while I was away (I am blessed to be living in a place where I have friends and can occasionally trust strangers). During the repair, one of the picture frames we had on the wall fell and broke. Nothing big, just a simple frame from Ikea that costs less than 7 EUR. I took all of it apart and kept stored safe for the undefined future.
The future came yesterday as my wife and I purchased a poster from an exhibition we attended last weekend. I felt a rush to hang it on a wall and the only frame I had was the one I mentioned earlier. Thankfully we are both good with our hands so when the time finally came I used some wood glue, tape, and a hammer and with the help of my wife, we put it back to its original shape. I had plenty of occasions to replace the broken frame with a new one as neither the cost nor the availability was an issue, yet I decided to keep the 7 EUR frame in parts for over a year. Why?
The most obvious reason is - I was taught to do so. The older generation of Poles, people directly responsible for my education like my parents or teachers, had severe issues in getting what they wanted back in the 70s and 80s. That's due to a shortage of food and goods related to the economic crisis and increasing foreign debt of the People's Republic of Poland (RIP). Since they couldn't simply buy things they had to be creative and resourceful. So instead of replacing broken items, they would fix them. As a person born in the 80s, I did experience some of it on my skin, however, that's nothing compared to what the older generation has experienced and developed into a skill. And, either consciously or not, passed over to the next generation.
Now, two generations later, this mindset faded away. I am glad for the reasons why it did as we're blessed to live in prosperity with lots of goods and services available at our fingertips. On the other hand, we are living unsustainable lives, generating tons of waste, polluting the world around us, and jumping head-first into the climate crisis.
Fixing a 7 EUR frame rather than replacing it with a new one is just one small step. The frame is just 4 pieces of wood. But the same should be possible with more complex items we own. iFixit is a company that monitors the consumer electronics market and provides spare parts kits together with instructions on how to perform required maintenance on the items we own. They also rate devices such as laptops and phones, to indicate how fixable and upgradeable they are. Read more about the company's mission in its Right-to-repair manifesto https://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Of course, not everyone is manually capable of fixing everything. Just last week I felt too intimidated to replace a battery in my phone on my own so I delegated this task to someone much better at doing so. I wish I could do it myself but most of the manufacturers make it very hard. Suddenly you need specialty tools and parts you'll use only once if you do it by yourself. This is why companies such as iFixit are needed to open our eyes to the problems we are (potentially) facing and influence the change among manufacturers. Luckily we have now more options than ever to buy more sustainable phones (Fairphone - https://fairphone.com) or laptops (Framework - https://frame.work) that will last 2 or 3 times as long as the devices we currently own.
This is just the tip of the iceberg - we still have TVs, washing machines, cars, etc. As long as we want to buy new rather than fix what we already own, we are maintaining the status quo. Let's join those who speak loudly about this problem, companies like iFixit, and start fixing rather than replacing. If I can do it, most of you can as well.
