Do we repair it honey?
Nah!!! Let’s get a new one instead.
This article tries to investigate the diminishing repair culture in our digital societies. It illustrates how our tech desires lead to manufacturing of digital devices that are increasingly less repairable and how it leads to the denial of our right of repair by many technology manufacturers. Finally it highlights the socio-cultural phenomenon of repair that exists mostly everywhere India and contemplates a future where the idea of repair holds a pervasive cultural value in our consumerist society.
Most of us take great comfort living in an information society that is connected and always up to date. Consumed in ubiquitous technologies, we hardly care about the consequences our digital lives manifest as long as the technologies are functional and everything is working. However, time and again we notice fractures in the technological systems amounting to a significant disruption of our socio-technical worlds. One such fracture is the rising problem of electronic waste that we generate and often overlook.
Electronic waste and its environmental impacts is becoming a serious global concern and many initiatives are being taken to deal with the generated e-waste.¹ Even few technology manufacturers are being environmentally responsible to properly recycle their products after their life cycle ends.² Still, the lack of knowledge resources and insufficient e-waste management infrastructure leads to a global production of 53.6 million metric tons of e-waste annually.³ In an ideal world 90–95% of e-waste can be recycled, but sadly not even 20% of it gets recycled globally.
Today, we benefit immensely from the overflowing mobile phones, laptops and other electronic devices and it is very hard to imagine a life without being connected or without digital devices. The rate of technological progress is so rapid that virtually, there is an app for everything imaginable and tangibly, there is new, better hardware being released every 6 months or so.⁴ ⁵ Consequently, there is a rise in app mortuaries and hardware graveyards. The nature of the current landscape of digital technology is such that either it is purposeful or becomes obsolete and redundant. Yet, between the two, lies the idea of repair, re-use and remanufacture which is slowly fading away as the digital machines we use everyday are becoming non repairable and we as a society are moving towards a use and throw culture.
Our desire to have minimal and sleek design, has created a trend to own compact and thinner devices. This shrinkage in size has employed the use of specialised automation processes to handle microscopic semiconductor components. These new assembly lines use a lot of automated precision tools and are very complex to set up. In the similar manner, to set up service and repair centres involves use of precision machinery and hiring or training of expert technicians to operate those. Thus the costs of such repair centres are often written off as overheads that manufacturers are reluctant to invest in. This leads to an ecosystem where the idea of repair takes a backseat.
Not only this, non repairability is being professed by technology manufacturers by design as well.⁶ Most manufacturers have closed sourced their repair manuals and have proprietary claims to repair.⁷ These manufacturers employ various methods like having paper seals to void warranties and proprietary screws so that the devices cannot be opened. The batteries and screens are glued to the frame of the device so that the device becomes slimmer and waterproof but very difficult to open up to repair or replace them. Software locks are imposed so that 3rd party repair components are blocked (i.e 3rd party components are not detected by the software of the devices). Furthermore, the costs of repairing a broken device are positioned in such a way that it encourages anyone to buy a newer upgraded device by paying a bit more than the cost of repairing the old one.⁸ Therefore, as we progress technologically, the challenges to repair are increasingly rising. There aren’t many options left with the digital consumers when their older devices malfunction apart from disposing or recycling them.
Much like the West, many sections of India are becoming a use-and-throw society. India is one of the top three countries in e-waste generation, growing at 25% each year.⁹ Many developed countries treat developing nations as dumping grounds for their electronic waste despite various international laws against it.¹⁰ Countries like India, which struggle with their usual waste management, have minimal systems in place to manage e-waste properly.¹¹ Only 5% of India’s total e-waste gets recycled due to poor infrastructure, legislation and framework which leads to a loss of diminishing natural resources and irreparable damage to the environment and health of the people working in industry.¹² Over 95% of e-waste generated is managed by the unorganised sector and scrap dealers who dismantle the disposed devices instead of recycling them.¹³
At the same time, there also exists a strong ecosystem of repair and re-use. From shoes to digital devices, instances of repair culture are found in all corners of India. Almost every city or town in India has designated electronics repair markets, where laptops, mobiles and tablets are repaired. Each of these markets have many small repair shops with technicians offering their services to all and sundry. Generally, in India, skills such as repair are looked at as a vocation for the uneducated/underprivileged. However, in the digital and connected society that we are in, these technicians are no less than the superheroes, who continuously hack and reverse engineer technology to fight against the technology manufacturers. Knowingly or unknowingly, they fight for our right to repair, saving the day for a majority of people who don’t want to dispose of, recycle and buy a new one.
This repair culture exists because socio-economically, technology is still perceived as a symbol of status especially in India. Despite the declining costs of laptops, phones and tablets, they have a perceived value of something that is expensive and owning them is considered as a metric to measure the societal success of an individual. In fact, technology manufacturers play into this societal behaviour to lure their customers into buying newer models with better features every year. Nonetheless, there still exists a large section of India, who simply cannot afford to buy new digital devices or value them as expensive and cannot just throw them away.
Similarly the repair culture finds its roots socio-culturally as the art of squeezing extended value out of discarded objects through frugal interventions called Jugaad (pronunciation : joogɑːd) which has always been an integral part of Indian culture. Jugaad has been the core of many innovations and encourages the practice of bending rules and thinking laterally to make things work.¹⁴ In essence, it is a careful deconstruction of any given problem to arrive at a sustainable and resourceful solution through strategies like reuse, repair, refurbishment and remanufacture.
According to the circular economy model, everything produced through economic activity must be transferred and used somewhere else, continuously. There are two loops — the inner and the outer loop — that continue the cyclicality. Most of us are familiar with the outer loop, which is sometimes called the loop of last resort or recycling. The inner loop, on the other hand, follows the route of repair, reuse and remanufacture. We regard sustainability as a new-found, future-facing concept but oftentimes we defocus the inner loop. Thus, this slow fading idea of repair in this throwaway culture needs to be encouraged and energised so that the inner and outer loops work together homogeneously.
In conclusion, looking at the cultural practises around repair that exist in India, there is so much that can be learned in terms of values, ingredients and processes. While the contemporary socio-technical world pushes us to engineer and design new technologies, what if we look at erosion, breakdown and decay as the starting points in thinking through the nature, use and effects of information technologies. As we progress technologically, it becomes crucial to simultaneously think about these breakdowns in our socio-technical worlds. This is where philosophies around repair and reuse can be leveraged both while consuming and creating. Not only do they give a way to the consumer to be able to consume essentially, but also, they can be helpful in charting out a path of conscientious creation where technology creators think of the afterlife of their creations. Repair should become more actionable and hold a pervasive cultural value, in the hope of transforming into a society that repairs more readily than it purchases.
This theoretical investigation was conducted with the fellowship received from Futura Trōpica supported by Eyebeam’s Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future.
Futura Trōpica takes the form of a decentralised network for lateral exchange among territories of the tropical belt, such as Bogotá, Kinshasa, and Bengaluru. It operates through an online and offline platform for sharing local resources, exploring new modes of distribution from a Tropikós perspective. The network is built for artists, designers, cooks, musicians, artisans and researchers from the tropical belt as a decentralised hub for unlearning, sparring and exploring other (endotic) forms of knowledge, designs, and technologies.
[1]: According to the UNU, by 2017 66% of the world’s population was covered by national e-waste management laws. The large increase was mainly attributed to India, where legislation was adopted in 2016.
“Chapter 1, Section 1.3 : Global E-Waste Management Initiatives .” Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Handbook, by Vannessa Goodship et al., 2nd ed., Woodhead Publishing, 2019, pp. 8–13.
[2]: Morgan, Blake. “10 Most Sustainable Consumer Tech Companies.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 9 Nov. 2020, 5:39 PM EDT, www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2020/11/09/10-most-sustainable-consumer-tech-companies/?sh=38f3ebdd49a8.
[3]: In 2019, the world generated a striking 53.6 Mt of e-waste, an average of 7.3 kg per capita. The global generation of e-waste grew by 9.2 Mt since 2014 and is projected to grow to 74.7 Mt by 2030 — almost doubling in only 16 years.
Forti V., Baldé C.P., Kuehr R., Bel G. The Global E-waste Monitor 2020: Quantities, flows and the circular economy potential. United Nations University (UNU)/United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) — co-hosted SCYCLE Programme, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) & International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), Bonn/Geneva/Rotterdam.
[4]: Shapiro, Ari, host. “There’s An App For Everything, And That’s A Problem.” Talk of the Nation”, NPR, Evgeny, Morozov, contributor, 4 Mar. 2013. https://www.npr.org/2013/03/04/173440431/op-ed-theres-an-app-for-everything-and-thats-a-problem
[5]: Traditional release cycles were more spaced out and new devices took around 3–5 years to come to the market. Today this timeline has shrunk to 6 months for phones and a year for laptops and tablets.
[6]: Chugh, Ritesh. “Screwed over: How Apple and Others Are Making It Impossible to Get a Cheap and Easy Phone Repair.” The Conversation, 12 Mar. 2021, theconversation.com/screwed-over-how-apple-and-others-are-making-it-impossible-to-get-a-cheap-and-easy-phone-repair-156871.
[7]: Statt, Nick. “Why Apple and Other Tech Companies Are Fighting to Keep Devices Hard to Repair.” The Verge, The Verge, 3 Aug. 2017, 11:55 EDT, www.theverge.com/2017/8/3/16087628/apple-e-waste-environmental-standards-ieee-right-to-repair.
[8]: Repairing rather than replacing gadgets usually saves their owners money. But sometimes new electronics are priced so cheaply that repairing them doesn’t make financial sense. Such is the case with printers, which are deliberately sold cheaply; the manufacturer then makes a healthy profit on ink or toner cartridges. (Razors are sold on a similar model.)
Ivanova, Irina. “How Manufacturers Make It Impossible to Repair Your Electronics.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 15 Jan. 2021, 7:06AM , www.cbsnews.com/news/electronics-product-repair-manufacturers/.
[9]: Gowda, Varsha. “India’s e-Waste Problem: Once a Trickle, Now a Torrent.” Deccan Herald, 28 Mar. 2021, 3:15 PM IST, www.deccanherald.com/specials/insight/indias-e-waste-problem-once-a-trickle-now-a-torrent-967440.html.
[10]: Globally, trade in hazardous and other wastes, including e-waste is regulated under the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste and their Disposal (1992). The Convention was developed in response to a series of scandals in the 1980s involving the dumping of toxic waste in developing countries. Currently, 178 countries are parties to this Convention, including almost every country in East Asia and the Pacific.
“Chapter 9 : Illicit Trade in Electrical and Electronic Waste (e-Waste) from the World to the Region.” Transnational Organized Crime in East Asia and the Pacific: a Threat Assessment, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, 2013, pp. 101–111.
[11]: India collected just 10 percent of the electronic waste (e-waste) estimated to have been generated in the country 2018–19 and 3.5 percent of that generated in 2017–18. Report by the Central Pollution Control Board. CPCB report on e-waste management in India, 18/12/2020.
[12]: A lot of precious metals (copper, gold, silver, nickel, platinum, palladium, cobalt, tungsten, etc.) are used in the manufacture of electronic devices.
[13]: Kaur, Banjot. “Can India Manage Its Toxic e-Waste?” Down To Earth, 28 June 2018, www.downtoearth.org.in/news/waste/can-india-manage-its-toxic-e-waste-60891.
[14]: Belchandan, Piyush. “Jugaad to Frugal Innovation and Beyond.” Medium, UX Collective, 26 July 2020, uxdesign.cc/jugaad-to-frugal-innovation-and-beyond-67ab2cd10509.
