All over the world, people are becoming more and more aware of the environmental harm caused by our tendency to throw away items when they no longer function as well as they originally did. Last week, I was asked to contribute to a repair café hosted by the Hamilton environmental organization Green Venture.
Repair cafés are community driven events that bring together people who have items that need fixing with volunteers that have the skills to fix them. Started in Amsterdam by Martine Postma in 2009, they have now spread widely, with over 1500 repair cafes worldwide.
Green Venture held their event at their gorgeous location, the Eco House. Over the course of a couple hours there I helped repair a variety of items including a beloved dog leash, a favourite handbag, and a broken lamp.
For several of these items – especially a small nylon cell phone case – it was likely easier to replace them than to sit in the blazing sunshine making small talk with me while I stitched it up. But it kept the item from ending up in a landfill.
Part of the reason we dispose of things once they’re broken is how difficult it is to get items repaired.
In the 1920s, the automobile market was saturated, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to sell new vehicles. An engineer at General Motors named Alfred Sloan coined the idea of dynamic obsolescence, an idea he borrowed from the bicycle industry that involved changing features of a vehicle every year to create a desire to always have the newest and best model.
The idea was quickly relabelled planned obsolescence and products from then on were designed to stop working after a specific period of time in order to force the user to purchase a new one. Products were also constantly upgraded with new features and design to instill in buyers a desire to acquire a new product before their item failed and they were forced to. Our modern, throw-away consumerist society was born.
As a result, many of the items we take for granted today including furniture, small appliances and especially electronics are designed to fail prematurely. They are also designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to repair, necessitating the purchase of a new item.
Which is fine if you’re the corporation selling them, but more problematic if you’re the municipality trying to deal with the waste, or a planet constantly being stripped of your resources to meet this artificially induced demand.
Recently, however, consumers have begun to push back by demanding the governments legislate that consumer items are built so that they can be repaired.
The Right to Repair movement has been around for some time, but started when consumers in the United States demanded legislation that would allow them to unlock their own cell phones.
Since then various pieces of legislation have been proposed unsuccessfully in both Ontario and Quebec, and there is now a bill in parliament that passed second reading unanimously, that will likely die on the order papers when the election is called.
The movement is gaining considerable momentum elsewhere. In the UK, lawmakers have introduced a bill that would require electrical appliance manufacturers to make spare parts available. Similarly, in the U.S., President Biden has asked the Federal Trade Commission to draft legislation requiring farm equipment to be more easily repaired.
On the other side of the debate, manufacturers are lined up to oppose such legislation. John Deere is opposing the farm equipment repair bill on the grounds that it creates a safety risk, with no mention of the money their dealerships stand to lose when famously mechanically inclined farmers are able to repair their own equipment.
Similarly, electronic manufacturers stand united in their opposition to right to repair laws. None more so than Apple.
Apple’s resistance to making their devices repairable is legendary in the industry. They use special screws for which is it very difficult to obtain the screwdriver, and original parts are almost impossible to find new, forcing would be tinkerers to rely on original parts or second hand parts scavenged from other devices.
Apple has also been the most outspoken in its opposition to Right to Repair legislation, but concern about their opposition has come from an interesting source.
Apple co-founder Steven Wozniak has come out as a vocal supporter of the right to repair movement saying that it was his ability to take electronics apart and figure out how they work that resulted in the first Apple computers being built.
Different lawmakers have tried different approaches to force manufacturers to make their products more repairable. In Canada, the private members bill that will be dropped if an election is called shortly, as many predict, focused on the copyright act.
The private members’ bill, tabled by Liberal MP Bryan May, sought to make it illegal for electronics manufacturers to use protection tools called digital locks, that prevent just anyone from making repairs. Often these locks immobilize or ‘brick’ the device being repaired unless certain codes are entered by manufacturer approved technicians.
As more and more items in the home become ‘smart items’ manufacturers are seeing this as an opportunity to not only harvest data, but to install digital locks preventing repair by anyone other than their own technicians. May’s bill would seek to ban this practice, ensuring that repairs were not only possible, but affordable.
As countries like the Phillipines and China slam their doors to accepting Canada’s waste and municipal recycling programs struggle to find markets for the waste they are producing, it is encouraging that people are rethinking their relationship with consumerism.
The proof will be when some of the proposed legislation manages to pass, despite the tremendous money and persuasion of manufacturing lobbies.
The next couple of years will likely be pivotal. I’ll be sure to report any updates as they happen.
If you want to learn more about this, check out the interview I did with Ken Vickerson, a long-time volunteer for Repair Café, on the Environmental Urbanist radio show.
SLAPP Lawsuits and Real Estate Development
The Narwhal reported last week that BC is facing the first test of it’s SLAPP legislation (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) when it comes to environmental protection in a property development case.
SLAPP legislation which only exists in BC, Ontario and Quebec is a tool that organizers and activists can use to get libel, defamation, and similar court cases thrown out when it’s clear that they are an attempt to silence public discussion about contentious issues.
The issue in question is over a proposed development in a sensitive ecological area. Ezra Morse, the founder of a Facebook page that opposed the development has been sued by developers Richard and Linda Todsen for libel.
Morse is seeking to have the case dismissed under a SLAPP designation. Follow the Narwhal for more details.
Cities Supporting Biodiversity
It seems that people are slowly waking up to the idea that cities can be a haven for biodiversity. While this has been the theme of the Environmental Urbanist radio show for close to two years now, the idea is still often dismissed by ecologists who insist that the preservation of wild/natural areas is the only way to ensure the survival of a variety of species.
A new paper in BioScience addresses this as “the biological deserts fallacy” and makes the case that cities have a role to play in protecting biodiversity.
Some species, such as peregrine falcons thrive in high rise filled downtowns, while others such as coyotes, wild turkeys, merlins and fishers are slowly making their way into areas where the only wildlife populations have traditionally been songbirds, skunks, raccoons and squirrels.
Of course these creatures are not always universally loved and welcomed by the people who view them as invading their space, not the other way around, which is technically much more accurate.
Organizations like Coyote Watch Canada continue to work to dispel myths about the presence and activities of wildlife in cities, but clearly much more needs to be done before cities are both welcoming of wildlife, and able to function effectively to protect it.