If you’re a fan of the popular British TV show The Repair Shop, you might have seen presenter Jay Blades bemoaning our “throwaway society”.
“The way the consumerist society works is that we buy something new and if it doesn’t work, we just throw it away and get another one,” he says. “There’s no concept of ‘making do and mending’ the way our grandparents did. It’s just wrong.”
Jay and his fellow restorers aren’t the only ones trying to turn the tide on wasteful consumption – a global movement called the Right to Repair is attempting to make repairing products great again. Its focus is mainly household items such as whiteware and electrical devices (your laptop and smart phone, for example), and pushing for changes to our waste minimisation legislation to require the repairability of such items.
Because here’s the thing: if you bought a new fridge, washing machine or
