The European Environmental Bureau, one of the steering group members of The Right to Repair campaign, is inviting you to the policy session “European Right to Repair still loading”, which will launch Fixfest.

Please register here*

Everyday, short-lived electronic devices are sold on the EU market, wasting EU citizens’ money and depleting the world of finite resources. The stream of e-waste reached 50 million tonnes in 2018¹ and is expected to double by 2050, reaching 120 million tonnes annually².

This growing consumption of electronics has significant environmental impacts due to energy and material intensive activities such as resource extraction, manufacturing and end of life treatment. When these products are discarded, only a small portion can be effectively recovered through recycling. Keeping products in use for as long as possible reduces the need to make more!

“Extending the lifetime of all washing machines, notebooks, vacuum cleaners and smartphones in the EU by just one year would save around 4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually by 2030, the equivalent of taking over 2 million cars off the roads for one year”³.

More than half of EU consumers have environmental impact in mind when shopping⁴ and 8 out of 10 are in favour of making repairs easier⁵. Furthermore, making repairs more accessible would boost quality jobs and turnover among repairers, manufacturers, dealers of spare parts and sellers of used products in all EU Member States⁶. Repairs are labour-intensive activities which are difficult to move abroad while the effective production of consumer goods often takes place outside Europe.

In the past few months, the right to repair has been hitting the news as policy-makers and manufacturers worldwide have started to look into this issue. At EU level, things are moving but repair is still far from being easy, cheap and accessible for everyone.

Sign-up below to the hybrid event on Friday 30th of September to hear from professional and community repairers, innovative tech start-ups and environmental NGOs on how EU policies can be instrumental in overcoming remaining barriers to repair. We will also dive into the environmental savings and socio-economic opportunities that transitioning out of the throw-away economy of electronics could bring to Europe.

*Tickets are limited, so please check the schedule and make sure you are able to come before applying for any tickets. Once you have applied for a ticket, the Fixfest team will review your request and confirm your booking. To follow the live streaming of the event please register here.