UK households throw away 155,000 tonnes of unwanted electricals each year, nearly half of which could be repaired or reused, with high professional repair cost being one of the key barriers to product repair. However, both regulations and repairability indexes focus on professional repairs rather than user self-repair.
In this Policy Brief, Dr Fabrizio Ceschin and Laura Torca-Adell reflect on the findings of their observational study on how end-users perceive and experience the repairability of small electrical devices to recommend:
- Any regulations that seek to improve the sustainability of small electrical devices should include and promote end-user self-repair
- Product repairability indexes, which are scoring systems designed to inform consumers on how easily a product can be repaired, should distinguish between professional repairs and end-user repairs
- Product repairability indexes for end-users should consider user-centred factors such as accessibility to internal components and ease of fault identification. They should also be based on testing with end-users
Read the full policy brief here.
Cite: Ceschin, Fabrizio and Torca-Adell, Laura (2025). Improving product repairability indexes by considering real user experience. Brunel University of London. https:doi.org/10.17633/rd.brunel.29562698