A large proportion of all electrical appliances in Germany are simply thrown away, because repairing your toaster, your TV or your smartphone would be more expensive than just buying a new one. This is a waste of resources that needs to be stopped. And it’s one of the reasons why Germany pledged to comply with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, in 2015. The twelfth SDG, for instance, calls for sustainable consumption and production patterns – and disposable technology is anything but sustainable. On the basis of this voluntary commitment, German consumer groups are calling for consumers to be given a ‘right to repair’ of goods they have purchased. But this whole area is something of a minefield, because if consumers opt to have their appliance repaired, that means fewer sales of new appliances…
Read the full article here