“If you want a prize exhibit for the Museum of Unrepair ability, the humble inkjet is a contender”

Last May, Right To Repair Europe (righttorepair.eu), a sustainability campaign group formed of activists and Green MEPs, staged a demonstration outside the European Commission (EC) in Brussels. It was a reminder to policy makers about a pledge they’d made about printers.

Twelve months earlier, the EC had promised to address the life cycle and premature obsolescence of electrical products by promoting initiatives such as right to repair. It had singled out printers as particularly wasteful products, so the EC threatened specific regulation “unless the sector reaches an ambitious voluntary agreement”. The deadline for this was September 2020.

SPOILER WARNING! Angry protesters next to a stack of knackered printers may have given the game away. Those protesters are right to be furious. If you’re searching for the prize exhibit to shove into the Museum of Unrepairability, then the humble home inkjet is a contender.

At our shop, the answer to the question, “do you fix printers?” is “rarely”. The common inkjet is a modern marvel of electromechanical engineering, and beneath