Recently, I read an article championing legal standards for product repairability. My recent ‘Off the grid’ ramblings had, coincidentally, included the repair and refurbishment of items; the article induced some further contemplation.
Heading on down that track, we find ourselves contemplating around-the-globe efforts to create – or extend – repairability standards; and a parallel push for the recirculation of materials, known as a circular economy. These are interesting trends, with implications for all things sheddie.
Some background
We have lived through an amazing era – and created some repercussions in the process. Materially, we have extracted, consumed, and discarded – an almost entirely linear process. Competing products became ever more complex as they strove for market share via manufacturing efficiencies.
For instance: integrated-circuit manufacturing is apparently down to using UV (rather than ordinary) light to create wafers – but the products they comprise are increasingly not, by any stretch of the imagination, fixable. Nor – because the materials are so mixed and in such miniscule
