I know EU has the Right to Repair initiative and that’s a step to the right direction. Still I’m left to wonder, how did we end up in a situation where it’s often cheaper to just buy a new item than fix the old?
What can individuals, communities, countries and organizations do to encourage people to repair rather than replace with a new?
Well, clearly as others said, it’s the economy of scale: making large quantities of the same thing is cheaper than making small runs or one offs, and spare parts don’t sell as much, if an item is designed well (i.e. doesn’t break immediately).
But, I want to add something important IMHO: buying new because is cheaper isn’t really the problem, the problem is the waste it generates, and when we throw away (or hoard…) something, neither we nor the company that made the item pays for the cost of disposal. In fact, in many cases, the cost will be paid by society as a whole, sometimes by future generations. This is why it appears cheaper to buy new, but really, there’s a hidden cost that individuals and companies don’t directly pay.
If we could, somehow, make a company pay for the disposal of all the waste their products create, I tell you, repairing would be a lot more common.