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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2023 - 2024
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | December 13, 2022 10:32 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Kristine C. Howard |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Repairability Index for Electronic Devices |
| Yesterday’s fancy new gadget is tomorrow’s garbage. Television stopped working? Buy a new one. Microwave shorted out? Buy a new one. Phone screen cracked? Buy a new one. While discussions of our throwaway culture frequently revolve around our collective impatience, the larger issue is waste. When our broken – or merely older – electronics become garbage, they flood our landfills and roadsides with hazardous and non-renewable components, components which must be mined and manufactured anew with great environmental impact for each new device. To make matters worse, many products actively discourage any other behavior. Devices are deliberately made difficult to repair, with access to information on how to make repairs kept scarce, ensuring even those with the interest and skills are prevented from doing so. This is manufactured helplessness, plain and simple. This is why I plan to re-introduce legislation that will create a repairability index, requiring original equipment manufacturers to rate and display the repairability and longevity of each item they sell. Displaying the difficulty of repairing products will make it easier for consumers to make informed purchasing decisions, and is a necessary first step in changing the culture of planned obsolescence, a culture that has created worldwide shortages of the computer chips necessary to make electronics, from synthesizers to cars to medical devices. By ensuring consumers have pertinent repairability information, this legislation will help curb electronic waste and force manufactures to rethink their business models. Repairability is not only a consumer rights issue; it’s an environmental issue. |
Introduced as HB427