Right to Repair Action Toolkit

You buy stuff. It breaks or doesn’t work right. You could throw it away and buy new stuff, but you’d rather repair it. But then you find out you can’t do it yourself, and you can’t even bring it to a third party repair shop. You have to bring it back to the original company, which can charge an arm and a leg because there’s no competition—and sometimes they just won’t fix it. And you decide to throw the thing away.

This means more cost to consumers, and it also means more waste. Californians dispose of 46,000 cell phones per day, and only 15 to 20 percent of electronic waste is recycled.

We imagine a different kind of system, where instead of throwing things out, we reuse, salvage and rebuild. The goal of Right to Repair is to give every consumer and small business access to the parts, tools and service information they need to repair products so we can keep things in use and reduce waste.

The Right to Repair Act

The Right to Repair Act, Senate Bill 244 by Senator Susan Eggman, allows individual owners and regulated independent service dealers access to functional parts, tools, and service literature from manufacturers for electronics and appliances.

Senate Bill 244 is supported by consumer groups, environmental organizations, small business and repair shops, recyclers, schools, and more. 

Unfortunately, our state leaders are also hearing from big companies who would push us into buying more and throwing more away. 

Join the effort and take action today to make Right to Repair a reality in California. 

• Send a message to your state legislator. Once you’ve signed, send it to friends to spread the word.
• Are you a repair shop or other small business owner? Add your name to our business support letter.
• Make a phone call to your state legislator.  You can look up your State Assemblymember here. Give their office a call and tell them you support Senate Bill 244 for the Right to Repair.
• Help get the issue in the media by writing a letter-to-the-editor to your local paper. Check out our guide here.
• Educate your community by posting on social media. You can follow CALPIRG on Twitter and Facebook or post using our guide.