5 surprising findings from data about 208,000 repairs

The Open Repair Alliance released a new report on Tuesday, Oct. 15, written by the Restart Project, which examines data collected about more than 200,000 repairs conducted at community repair events around the world. 

Part of the global coalition fighting for your Right to Repair, the Open Repair Alliance helps repair advocates, including U.S. PIRG Education Fund, keep track of what people are trying to fix, whether or not repairs are successful, and why. 

The alliance is unveiling the report, The Rise of Community Repair, to coincide with International Repair Day this coming Saturday. Here are five of the most important findings from this report: 

1. People everywhere just want to fix their stuff. 

Community repair events — including Repair Cafes, Fixit Clinics and Restart Parties — have grown considerably over the last 15 years. The report estimates there are more than 4,000 community repair groups, operating in 31 countries, now host events that offer free repair help to anyone who wants it, performing an estimated 190,000 successful repairs each year. People not only donate their time to help neighbors fix products, but also catalog hundreds of thousands of repair attempts. That serves as the data for this new report. 

People everywhere are passionate about fixing stuff.

2. A majority of things people bring to these events get fixed right then and there 

People are better at fixing things than you might think. Of all the electronic products that get brought to community repair events, 53% get fixed at the event. Furthermore, many of the people whose products are not fixed at the event, make a plan to complete the repair (which might include ordering a part or visiting a repair shop with the needed equipment). One-quarter of the products are deemed “end of life,” without a realistic or cost-effective way to complete the repair. 

You might think that older item you have is probably dead … but it might not be. You should bring it to a local repair event, and see if a tinkerer can revive it — the odds are pretty good that someone can. 

3. Right to Repair reforms could remedy most of the reasons why things don’t get fixed 

Right to Repair reforms — which require manufacturers to provide fair and reasonable access to spare parts, service manuals and repair tools — can help us fix more of our stuff. Looking at the tens of thousands of products that repair hobbyists could not fix, no spare parts were available for 25%, another 18% had parts available but they were cost-prohibitive, while another 12% lacked repair information, meaning repair might be possible, but technicians were unable to obtain the documentation or instructions they needed. 

These are exactly the issues Right to Repair reforms are intended to remedy.

Chart from “The Rise of Community Repair”Photo by Restart Project | CC-BY-4.0

4. Things need to be designed to be repairable

Some products are unfixable by design: 16% of “repair failures” happened because technicians couldn’t open the products, making them physically impossible to repair. 

This number should be zero. No electronic device should be designed to be sent to the dump the first time it needs a fix. Consumers don’t go shopping for unfixable gadgets. However, it’s hard to find reliable information at the point of sale about how fixable a product is. That’s why the European Union is instituting “repair scores” to indicate how fixable a product is. These labels, kind of like repairability versions of the EnergyGuide labels on appliances in the United States, would provide crucial information to consumers when they go to buy products.

The report discusses ways to improve these scores (such as considering cost of spare parts), which we should consider as we work to bring repair scores to the U.S. Learn more about our efforts here. 

5. People want their products to last

It used to be that products were made with standardized replacement parts, available decades after the manufacturer originally made the product, and manufactured by a range of suppliers. 

Last week, U.S. PIRG highlighted a mobility assistance device which the manufacturer said it only planned to support repairs on for five years, despite the cost and importance of the device (an exoskeleton which allowed its user to walk). Data from thousands of repair events shows that people hold on to most products for far longer than five years, regardless of intended support. On average, the age of coffee makers, laptops and printers brought in for repairs was seven years old; power tools and hair dryers averaged 10 years old; hi-fi audio systems were 18 years old on average; and projectors (which includes digital, film and slide projectors) averaged an impressive 28 years old. 

Someone who owns a product has a very different incentive than the manufacturer when it comes to the product’s longevity. The owner wants the product fixed and back in use with a reprieve from the landfill. The manufacturer would prefer to make a new sale. That’s why reforms such as repair scores and the Right to Repair are so important. They keep our stuff going.