Think about the products that you've used and owned for years, maybe a piece of furniture or a beloved clothing item. If they broke or got worn down, it would be normal to try to fix them, to paint over a scratch or replace a button. But when it comes to our tech gadgets, that is not typically how we operate. Most of us are in the habit of just shelling out for a new device when our old one breaks down because repairs feel too difficult or inaccessible. But does it have to be that way? With me is Nathan Proctor. He's the Senior Director of the Right to Repair campaign. We're going to talk about how things got this way and he'll share some tips for extending the life of your tech. Our conversation after this short break. Nathan Proctor, thank you so much for doing this.

So great to be here.

So I'm sure many people have experienced this thing that happens where you have a phone or maybe an appliance that works fine for a few years and then seemingly overnight it starts to go downhill. Maybe it stops working entirely. When did you realize that this wasn't just an annoying thing that happens, but actually a systemic problem?

We've always had products that, you know, like required some TLC, but what has changed is it used to be that products came with full service manuals, with standardized spare parts, that there was a huge range of options to maintain and repair those things. And to me, that is the thing that's really changed. At least, like, when I was a kid, when something broke, you fixed it. And now. When something breaks, you have to basically ask the manufacturer for permission to get it repaired and sometimes they just say, well, no, you have to replace it.

Why is the lifespan of our gadgets so short compared to the other products that we own, like furniture or clothes, which you could have for decades potentially?

'Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple factors that make electronics like more fragile or more prone to failure. The first is that, you know, electronics themselves are easily going to put out of sorts like a drop of water in the wrong spot. A spark could cause a serious issue. We had a hearing in Vermont and a representative of the appliance industry was asked why refrigerators specifically have declined in their lifespan pretty significantly over the last 20 years. And the answer that they gave was the electronics. So the computer chips, those fail just a lot quicker. And the second is that software is more or less completely controlled by the manufacturer. So if that spare part you need has software on it, pretty much the manufacturer is the only one that could supply you the part that's pre-programmed to work. And also products need ongoing software support. So millions of devices lose functioning because of remote deactivation or remote changes or they're not compatible with the internet anymore And third, frankly, nothing lasts like it used to. Like our clothes and furniture don't last as long as they did. And I think it's a trend across the entire scope of the economy and there's a really clear incentive for manufacturers of all kinds to create short lifespan products so that we have to buy more stuff. And that's exactly what's happening.

That's where we get the term planned obsolescence, right? Like these manufacturers are intentionally creating these products to have short lifespans so that we're incentivized to buy more things.

Right, it's a term that came from a literal cabal of light bulb makers who decided that light bulbs lasted too long and if they wanted to maintain profit margins, they would have to design light bulbs to die after a certain period of time. And once one company figured out that this was possible to do and they weren't being punished by the world for executing on this strategy, it became pretty much endemic across all the products that we see in our society.

Where is this showing up the most? Certain kinds of products or appliances especially vulnerable to this?

'You know, in my experience, it's easier for companies to bake in a really aggressive obsolescence cycle if the product is kind of new or novel, right? For example, when cell phones first came out, there was a really rapid increase in the quality of the technology in the first couple of generations. And, you know, it was like consumers kind of, after two years, the newer phones that were coming out were just like head and shoulders better than the one that you had. And so they kind of baked in this two-year upgrade cycle. Now the phones, I mean, we've gotten used to this upgrade cycle, so there's very little incentive to create a different kind of upgrade cycle if that cycle is so profitable. The wireless headphones are another product that I think are just kind of egregious, right? We spend $200 for these wireless Bluetooth-connected headphones. They're really nice products, BUT They have a sealed in battery that to replace the battery would require destroying the plastic casing on the headphone. And those batteries, you know, are consumable. Like they wear down over time. So over two years, they've become pretty functionally difficult to use. The other thing that's happening now is that things require software support through the internet. They're connected to the internet, which means that they need to be secure. They need to compatible with the internet protocols or whatever software that they need to interact with. And that also changes every few years. So all of those things together mean that if you have a product that relies on a sealed-in battery, if you a product thats new and the manufacturer is pushing a particular upgrade cycle and you product that requires ongoing software support, those things are gonna be failing a lot quicker than the appliances and other electronics that we were buying 40, 50 years ago.

Yeah, the upgrade cycle thing is so crazy making to me because, like, I am actively in the middle of this problem. I have a phone that's, like five years old. It should be fine. Nothing has happened to it. But now it randomly dies, it works slower, and I don't really have a reason to buy a new phone. None of the features that are new are compelling enough. But for the fact that my phone is slowly dying for no apparent reason. What are the environmental consequences of this short tech lifecycle and this push to always be getting us to upgrade to new devices?

'I mean, if it wasn't obvious that this is very bad for the environment, it's very bad for the enviroment. So the first thing to understand is that these products take a tremendous amount of resources to produce. That's critical minerals, that's electricity and energy, so we have to mine the copper and the lithium and the rare earth metals to the oil for the plastics. You know, a single smartphone is about 120 pounds of carbon. Uh, embedded to produce, um, and that the vast majority of its impact on pollution is, you know, through the manufacturing phase, we don't have an endless supply of the critical minerals that we're putting into these products, right? And we're looking for increasingly horrific ways of sourcing them. They're already kind of horrific now, but it's getting worse. Like companies want to send robots two miles down to the bottom of ocean, to turn some of the slowest moving and least understood ecosystems on Earth, a person's never been down. We've sent multiple people to the moon. We've never sent a person down there. We have no real understanding of what it would do to turn them into industrial zones, just so that we can dredge up these minerals and then put them into really short-lived electronics that we're not even bothering to fix or recycle. I mean, it's preposterous absurd. Right. I think people of the future will look back on our generation and just be shocked that we used up so much of the world's resources to make disposable stuff. And then the second problem besides the sourcing of these things is the waste, right? Electronic waste is very expensive to deal with. It's chock-full of very toxic chemicals, flame retardant sprayed on the materials, heavy metals like mercury and cadmium lead that cause cancer. And other health effects, birth defects, when they interact with soil and water. And even when they're in the recycling stream, our ability to extract those minerals from the products and reuse them is pretty low. And 80% of these electronics never get properly recycled anyway. So it really, the onus is on us to reduce the amount of unnecessary stuff that we're making. That is clearly the environmental priority.

Practically speaking, what needs to change here? Are there things that manufacturers could do differently to address this problem?

'Yes, I mean we need long-lived products that we can maintain, repair, and repurpose. Manufacturers need to design products so that they last and design and deploy the system of support around them. Things like spare parts and manuals and other repair tools that allow people to fix and reuse the stuff they already have. And, you know, we also need to rethink the idea of obsolete because we're just making so much wasted technology that we really could be repurposing if we just accepted that that's a necessary outcome and manufacturers enabled us to repurpose these things.

So that brings us to the Right to Repair campaign. Tell us about the mission of this effort and also who is involved here.

Right to Repair is a campaign that believes that you bought it, you own it, and you should be able to fix it. And we have model legislation that we work on all across the country that requires companies to give people what they need to fix their stuff. So that's things like parts, service manuals, and diagnostic software tools. Everything from toasters to tractors to medical equipment and hospitals, basically anything where the manufacturer has a way to fix it and is withholding that to create a kind of controlled service monopoly. And 10 states have passed legislation that requires manufacturers provide access to those things through the work of Right to Repair. And Right to repair is kind of a scrappy coalition of environmental and consumer advocates, DIY enthusiasts, repair shops, farmers, tinkerers, makers, people who just believe that we should be empowered. To deal with our stuff and we shouldn't be totally beholden to the way that companies think we should use our stuff because that generally speaking works best to the interests of their shareholders and not to the interest of the broader public.

Obviously, moving away from this constant upgrade cycle to more of a repair system would address some of these big picture problems that you're talking about, but what benefits could individual consumers see from that system change?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I was mentioning earlier that the constant upgrade cycle is expensive. The costs have risen a lot. We estimated with a report that we did called Repair Saves Families Big, that every American household could save $382 per year by repairing instead of replacing their electronics and appliances. Across the U.S. economy, that's like $50 billion in consumer savings. And that also includes all the money that we'd be spending on repairs, which is going to, you know, local repair shops, creating that local infrastructure and expertise around repair, which, you, know, is kind of like a virtuous cycle. Like that means that there's more community knowledge about how things are fixed and maintained. That means things will last longer. I also, as a consumer, love having somebody I can call when something is broken and have a high level of confidence that they'll be able to sort it out for me. I like being able to support those local technicians and also I, you know, it's just like convenient to have a local shop who's, 'oh yeah, I can take that computer, I can take the phone, I take that appliance and I'll sort it out quickly.' And that's something that I think Right to Repair is also seeking to protect for consumers, not just the cost savings, but also a robust marketplace for repair services.

When we come back from the break, how can we as individuals try to hold on to our devices for longer? And what do tech companies have to say about all of this? We'll be right back. The perspective of the tech companies is often like, look, with each new device upgrade cycle, we're making real improvements to the product, so it's worthwhile to upgrade. Or they say that allowing repairs could make it easier for hackers to break into devices because the repair information is out there. Sometimes they say they have to degrade service on older devices in order to support new ones. What is your response to those arguments?

Well, first, let's just be clear about the incentives, right? Like, the incentives are kind of, you can't argue with them. They definitely have an incentive to sell more new stuff. That is their business model. We need to put different incentives in place. I mean, specifically around the cybersecurity argument, I mean if you think that you're securing a device against intrusion by preventing people from fixing something, like that's preposterous, but also that just means your security is quite bad. Like if they had a copy of the manual, they would be able to hack your devices. Like I just don't think that's true.

Not great, yeah.

And, you know, do they need to degrade older devices to support the newer devices? I mean, I don't think that I expect companies to spend money forever to support the devices that I have. But I also don't want them to force feed us new features that we don't need and that don't last. I don't want them to have complete control over the software of these devices forever. I think we need to protect the ability for the marketplace to reprogram, repurpose older devices. For example, Amazon recently walked away from its older Kindles. They just cut off support. So Kindles before 2012 are just they can't download new books or there's you have to side load them or it's some complicated process. But they've made these so that you can't just like buy another software from Microsoft or whatever and install it on your Kindles. Like that's a violation of copyright law. We need to like fix that problem. We should be able to repurpose older devices and we need protections for that kind of work in the economy because it's your hardware you paid for. You own it.

Yeah, I know some companies have also agreed to make their products more repairable, but they want to control the repair parts and who has access to them and where you can get them. What do you make of that?

'This is what my colleague Gaye Gordon-Burn of the Repair Association has dubbed the circular monopoly where it's like, yeah, we'll create this much more circular vision and all you have to do is give us total control over the life cycle of the product and let us make all the decisions in the benefit of our shareholders for how it's happening. It's impractical. It's frankly a little bit insulting. We bought it. We own it. We get to decide what happens to it. If you don't want to sell products, if you want to you want to own them forever to control them, then just lease them or do something else. But if you sell it to me, then I should have the ability to control it. The other part is that like, it's completely impractical for that to be a viable model. Like there's just way too much stuff out there. And people are in all kinds of different situations like, you know, I'm working on legislation in Alaska and Hawaii and there's just no way that those models would be effective in some of these places that are far away from the manufacturer's base of operations.

To your point about having local repairmen, you could in a small town have one guy who knows how to repair your iPhone and your Android device and your laptop and your Kindle in a place where all of those companies aren't necessarily going to have physical repair centers.

You know, my parents live in a rural county in New York and I mean, that's how everything is handled. I mean there's a guy who fixes everyone's chainsaws and snowblowers and it's just how rural life happens. And to me, that is like a key aspect that we're losing in our system where it's like everything is consolidated and it takes away our ingenuity and our creativity. And you know, all of those things are kind of part of you know the American spirit. And really have tremendous benefits. They inspire careers and technology. This is how like Steve Jobs and, you know, Wozniak got started was fixing televisions and taking things apart. To me, this is like, yeah, I wanna protect that. I wanna get back to that.

You mentioned that a number of states have passed Right to Repair bills. Are those starting to make a difference?

Yeah, I mean, we have a long way to go. But when I started this campaign in 2018, joining with iFixit and Repair.org, you could not buy a single spare part or access a manual for any cell phone on the market. The Apple shared no spare parts or manuals with the broader public. Now you can buy hundreds of different iPhone parts. Apple has a full service manual. They're quite good. For almost all of their products that they sell, not all of them, but almost all them. And so we've seen real gains, but there's a lot of ground to go. You know, we just did a report called Leaders and Laggards where we assessed the availability of parts and manuals for a number of small household appliances. And we could not get a manual for 95% of the products that we assessed, despite these laws that are out there. Companies are still catching up to these requirements, and I'm hoping they can do so quicker without like legal intervention, but these laws are in place for a reason.

So, for people listening, what can we do as individuals to try to hold onto our devices longer? Are there ways that we can repair now, even if they're maybe a little bit less convenient than just going and buying a new device?

Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, some people have the technical skills to fix things. You know, many people don't. So there's two solutions for that. One is to find a professional repair shop that you think is honest and trustworthy. And so you should try to support those businesses, they're really important parts of our community. The second is that you can teach yourself things. And we have to rebuild some of these skills in our society and They're less, it's less challenging than you'd think. So there's this growing movement called Repair Cafes or Fix It Clinics. And we have this holiday in the fall we call International Repair Day. And this year we had 3,400 events, free community repair events where people bring broken stuff and they get coaching or assistance to fix the products that they bring in. About 70% of the products that come get fixed. And this is a 55% increase in these events from this year's holiday to the last year's.

Wow.

These things are going on all the time. There's hundreds of these. So you could look to see if there's one in your local community. And if you've got like a blender or something that is not working properly or leaking, you know, you could bring it in and somebody who's a little bit handier than you can walk you through what you need to do to fix that. And then there's also resources like ifixit.com, which is like the DIY headquarters of the internet. They have tens of thousands of repair guides. I recently used iFixit to fix my vacuum.

Mmm.

They had a great guide and I was able to figure out that the brush motor had burned out and that they have this tool called the repair bot which kind of helped me find the exact spare part I needed on eBay and got it for like $12 and saved the $200 vacuum.

Nice. It strikes me that part of the solution here is just like a mindset shift. Like for me and my sad old phone that's dying, rather than just sort of accepting that this is the way that it is and I have to go and upgrade, maybe I should take a minute to do some research on these websites or find a local repair shop and see if there's anything I can do to fix it before I go and buy that new phone. That just sort is a new way that we as consumers have to think about this.

Yeah, absolutely. And also like repair is kind of a community activity. And so you're not alone in your desire. Like get some help from somebody and get some advice. You know, it could be that some of these things do need to be replaced. I mean, that does happen. Don't assume that that's the case. Like talk to somebody. And, you know, one of the other things that researchers have found is that people replace things even when it's cheaper to fix them. Because we have this sense that newer products are more reliable than, you know, like a product that needs a repair. Like if your dishwasher is six years old and something is going wrong with it, you're like, well, if I get a new dishwasher, but there's no guarantee that that new dishwasher is gonna last and not be a huge hassle. And we underestimate the cost and hassle of new things because they feel more convenient.

Well, Nathan, thank you so much for doing this. We really appreciate your time and your insights on this.

Yeah, absolutely. It's been a pleasure.

'Repairing our tech instead of just replacing it can feel intimidating, but for our environment and for our pocketbook, it could be worth a try. Some tech companies have started to make repairs easier by making spare parts and manuals available, but there's still a long way to go. If you want to find a repair shop or workshop near you, or learn whether there's a right to repair law in your state, we'll link to the Right to Repair website in our show notes. Thanks again to Nathan Proctor for joining us. And if you have a question about any tech issue popping up in your life, please send us an email or voice note to [email protected]. We would love to hear from you. That's it for this week's episode of Terms of Service. I'm Clare Duffy. Catch you next week.