Right to Repair

Translated by Irene Cecchi

Lualaba, a district in the South of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the site of Kamilombe, dusty miners are challenging the suffocating dark and the crumbly walls of tens of meters deep tunnels to bring to light stones with unique turquoise veins. Once they come out on the surface, the mineral is put in bags and handed over to the care of women who wash it. Bent over a muddy pond for hours, these women sift it, inhaling toxic dust, particulate and traces of uranium in order to find cobalt, the “blue gold” needed for lithium-ion batteries at the base of mobiles, laptops and electric vehicles.

Accra, Ghana’s capital, overlooking the Guine’s gulf. In the suburban area of Agbogbloshie, skin and bone cows are grazing among the rubble of one of the most famous e-waste open-air dumps. Ashy fumes come out from the poisoned ground where men and children burn computer’s plastic wires, washing machines and other appliances to extract copper.

Strasbourg, a French city at the border with Germany. On April 23rd 2024, the European Parliament implemented a directive related to the so-called “right to repair”, a new approach to the goal of reducing the impact of our e-waste.

The European Union is taking its first step in a crucial area: the lifecycle of tech devices that are at the basis of industrial countries’ wellness and the pressing green transition. This is a cycle that often starts and finishes in Africa, the first victim along with the rest of the Global South of the costs of modernization and globalization.

E-Waste

The term electronic waste refers to all kinds of tech devices like computers, mobiles and electrical appliances that are no longer used. The e-waste represents the fastest growing flow of waste in the world, with an expected increase of 33% before 2030 compared to 2022, when it amounted to 62 million tons. Even though China is the first e-waste producer by far and six out of the world top 10 are developing countries, relatively speaking the developed economies are the ones heading this list with Norway at the top, producing 27 kg of e-waste per year per capita –way more than the African average of 2.5 kg.

Being the result of a mix of toxins like lead, mercury, cadmium and brominated flame retardants with precious metals –including neodymium, indium and the already mentioned cobalt– the e-waste is a risk both for health and for the environment, along with economic opportunities. In 2022, the trade of e-waste was worth 2.76 billions, with US and South Korea leading the list of exports while Japan and Mexico are the main importers. According to the amendments of 2022 Basel Convention for the control over the movements of hazardous e-waste between borders and their elimination that will be effective starting in 2025, all e-waste will need to pass the procedure of Prior Informed Consent. According to this procedure, the export country has to notify every country in which the e-waste will pass through or arrive.

Nonetheless, a 2015 report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that around 60/90% of e-waste is handled informally and so it ends up being traded and disposed of illegally, creating a market of 12.5/18.8 billion dollars per year. E-waste represents an international challenge, especially because illegal shipments are mainly directed to Africa and Asia, where their hazardous impact is enlarged by ineffective management without guidelines and infrastructures. The notorious “recycling” site of Agbogbloshie shows the serious air, water and soil pollution caused by the fallacious management of e-waste and its repercussions on locals’ health, especially pregnant women and children.

In the meantime, according to Professoressa Alison Stowell, Agbogbloshie represents a “flourishing hierarchical ecosystem of entrepreneurial activity” where the Ghanese population found a way to benefit from the waste coming from the Global North. In particular, the site provided a fertile ground for second-hand markets and discarded goods’ reparation. For the communities of developing countries, the e-waste may be a potential source of income.

Nevertheless, the complex and developing nature of electronic devices –and its consequent waste– is also challenging for the industrialized economies and it will end up worsening the already hard fight against the illegal and informal waste disposal in the Global South. In this perspective, the 2024 report over the e-waste made by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is not encouraging, showing a net loss of nearly 37 billion dollars related to the current e-waste handling procedures worldwide.

Right to Repair

The UNITAR report considers fixing and reuse the main options since they would be more suitable goals for the transition towards a circular economy which could break the unsustainable scheme of “use - waste production - collection - recycling”. This is why the report prefers new tendencies focused on fixing rather than substitution. For example, in more than forty US member states they presented legislative proposals while in Europe the new guideline of the EU Parliament will become effective in two years time in every member state.

This move by Bruxelles is based on the evaluations of the European Commission: the premature disposal of electronic devices used in the EU every year generates the equivalent of about 261 million tons of CO2 per product and 35 million tons of waste, along with the misuse of 30 million tons of resources. It is thought that these new guidelines will save the consumers almost 12 billion euros every year and 4.8 billion euros will be invested for the growth in the EU in the next fifteen years.

Basically, the directive aims to clarify the producers’ obligations to fix electronic devices fast and for a reasonable price, informing and encouraging the consumer to repair their devices and make their use-life longer. These new rules also forbid the producer to include “clauses, hardware and software techniques that prevent fixing the devices” with original or second-hand replacement parts by independent workers.

What now?

Nevertheless, the directive is more flexible than what groups like the coalition Right to Repair Europe hoped. First of all, the coalition complained about the fact that it is applied only on a small portion of products: the ones the consumer buys and that are already covered by the repairability requirements of the European law, excluding the industrial ones exchanged between companies. Then, they report that all missed opportunities downsize the directive range that, instead of overturning our modus vivendi, will only be limited to a few devices.

In this perspective, a report by the UN warns that “the dimension and gravity of the future e-waste problem will ultimately depend on our production and consumption patterns”, calling for a turning point towards a circular economy.

The authors underline that producers are having “the biggest opportunity to create a future-proof electronic industry” and actively face the rising demand for sustainable electronic devices. The producers would also allow innovative companies to take advantage of “the big potential of reuse of devices and their components” and they would support the technology growth of developing countries with high functional value devices, easing the Global South from the pressure of managing too much e-waste.

At the same time, Siddharth Kara –author of the bestseller Cobalt Red– encourages the consumers to resist the temptation of upgrading our gadgets every year in order to relieve the pressure over the bloody supply chain of cobalt.

Nonetheless, some obstacles are getting in the way of a true turning point. On one hand, the producers demand more guarantees about the intellectual property right and the responsibility for faulty fixing by third parties. On the other hand, since the directives are developed in the Global North, they might disregard the voice of the rest of the world, starting with the families that draw sustenance from the e-waste, just like the ones in Agbogbloshie. About this latter site, in 2021 the authorities, worried about the landfill's bad reputation, decided to raze it to the ground with the only result of worsening the condition of the families who were obliged to move their “business” inside their homes.

It is fundamental to have an international and holistic approach to combine the electronic devices economy with the respect of the environment and of human rights in every step of the value chain, from the cobalt mines in Congo to the landfills in Ghana. The EU directive marks the first step in the right direction, but we have to do more. In order to overturn the negative cost-benefit world ratio related to e-waste it is necessary to transcend our behavior as consumers and producers.

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