Fix it, don't ditch it

Almost every smartphone owner will have felt the sense of dread when a phone slips out of the hand and hits the floor - dread that, once it's flipped over, the once pristine screen will have been transformed into a mosaic of glass.

Given the number of electronics most of us own, cracked screens, dead batteries and any number of unexplained malfunctions are a frustrating but inevitable part of life. That frustration has been compounded by the difficulty of getting them fixed.

“There's a whole lot of barriers that have been put in place that mean we can't repair our devices as we used to,” says Leanne Wiseman, law professor at Griffith University. “As consumers, we've lost the ability to really exercise the rights of ownership over the things we own.

“Smart goods like phones and laptops, but also dishwashers, fridges, washing machines and