Originally published at: https://therestartproject.org/data-and-insights/how-our-real-world-data-is-making-the-case-for-the-right-to-repair/
Behind every broken product is a story. And after more than a decade of community repair events, we’ve heard thousands. Sometimes they are deeply personal. Sometimes hilarious. Most often, they are stories of frustration; frustration at products breaking and at how hard it can be to repair them. Every smashed smartphone, conked-out coffee machine or less-than-vigorous vacuum cleaner can tell us something about how the product was designed, why it broke and what’s needed to fix it.
So what can we learn from all these stories? And can these lessons help us make products easier to fix in the first place?
It starts with data
Back in October, we published data on 441,068 broken items and how people had tried to fix them at community events around the world. We did so with support from our partners in the Open Repair Alliance (ORA), an international coalition of community repair networks that we co-founded in 2017.
This data was recorded by volunteers at an astonishing 31,436 community repair events (such as repair cafés) in 32 countries. Each volunteer uploaded data about the broken items brought to their community event to one of the digital tools used by ORA’s data partners. Every year, we combine the repair data from all partners, clean it up and publish it on behalf of the whole Alliance. Over time it has become the world’s biggest open dataset on repairs.1
Here’s what we’ve learned and why it matters…
People want to fix things
We’ve probably all felt frustrated and disempowered when a product we rely on stops working properly or straight-up breaks (looking at you, printers). Conversely, community repair events offer an antidote. Each successful fix is a mundane miracle, a hands-on solution that gives a broken object a new lease of life and transforms frustration into joy.
Perhaps this is partly why the dataset we published this year is so much larger than ever before. For comparable product categories, the size of the dataset increased by 46% in just one year. Since last year’s update, the global community repair movement logged a whopping 11,000 items per month – that’s around 350 repair attempts every day!
While it’s hard to say how much of this is due to an increase in the total number of community repair groups or events or a greater proportion of groups reporting repair data, one thing is clear: lots of people want to keep using their products for longer.
But the data also shows us that this isn’t always possible.
We need a universal Right to Repair
After more than a decade of community repair events a bigger story has emerged; a tale of products not designed for repair and business practices that force us to “upgrade” to new devices instead of (re-)using what we already have.
Talk to any repair volunteer or professional and you’ll likely hear a similar story. But by collecting lots of real world data, we reveal that this problem isn’t just anecdotal. 43% of all the electronic and electrical devices seen went unrepaired, with the most common barrier reported being a lack of spare parts.
It’s not just you; lots of products are just harder to fix than they should be.
That’s why we’ve been calling for universal Right to Repair laws that make products easier to fix for more people. The more we can repair, the less we’ll waste, the more emissions we’ll prevent, the fewer resources we’ll need dug out of the ground and the less frustrated we’ll feel when things break.
We’re getting heard
Last year, we found that for 96% of all products brought to community repair events there’s no Right to Repair in sight.
So we’re thrilled that policymakers and research bodies are now starting to use our ORA data to inform their decision making.
For example, the EU’s influential Joint Research Centre (JRC) now lists ORA data as a key source in multiple reports and publications.2 Most recently, this includes their draft assessment of product categories to be prioritised for future repairability measures and potential repairability scoring as part of their Product Repairability work.3 Other institutions referencing our dataset include UK Research & Innovation (UKRI), the Wuppertal Institut and the European Environment Agency.
Overall, thousands have downloaded the data, including academics, repair groups or repair networks as well as businesses. We’ve even seen some manufacturers download it, including Sony Europe and Lenovo.
We have a long way to go until repair becomes the default for every broken product. But through real world data, we’re able to demonstrate that people really do want to repair and can suggest measures that would make repair easier. All of our real stories of frustration and broken products are starting to reach the ears of those with the power to change things.
So let’s keep sharing stories! If you run community repair events, you can add your own repair data (including data from past activities!) through our community platform, Restarters.net. Or find an alternative tool on the ORA website.
Further resources
- Read our landmark report from 2024 on what we’ve learned from all this data.
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1 That we know of. And we’ve looked extensively!
2 See the following publications:
SPILIOTOPOULOS, C. and GONZALEZ TORRES, M., Method for the assessment of product aspects in view of setting horizontal requirements, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2025, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/1792220, JRC143215.
SPILIOTOPOULOS, C., BERNAD BELTRAN, D. and ALFIERI, F., Reparability Scoring System – Product relevance scoping study, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2025, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/4556439, JRC139725.
3 Spiliotopoulos, C. and Faraca, G., Preparatory study for the setting of horizontal ecodesign requirements on repairability – Draft version for consultation, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, JRC144290 (PDF)
