Ugo

Vallauri

Ugo

Vallauri

Ugo

Ugo Vallauri

INTERVIEW

66

professional or not, which is fairly

worrying, because it could potentially

create the conditions for only authorised

repairers performing certain types of

repairs agreed by the manufacturers,

which is pretty much what’s happening

right now.

HS Still, a start though, to have the

need recognised?

UV Absolutely, it’s a start, and that’s why

we want to use this precedent to push for

much wider adoption of measures that

translate this concept to all kinds of other

products. The case of smartphones is

quite shocking – we’re talking about

globally over 1.5 billion new devices sold

per year. We see that there’s a very recent

trend of people wanting to keep products

in use for longer, and we’re pretty sure

that if conditions were simplified for

people to extend the useful life of a

product by making it easier to access

repair when a button goes wrong – or a

speaker, or a camera, or a charging port,

which we see quite frequently, or more

reliable battery replacement – this trend

will be more prevalent, and we will see a

longer lifetime for this product, which will

be win-win for the environment, and also

for providing a more vibrant local

economy for repair.

Repair jobs are the original green jobs.

They provide jobs for individuals in local

communities, as opposed to continuing

to buy and upgrade to new products

that rely on poor working conditions

elsewhere in the world. At a time of

climate emergency, we have a chance

to put things right by promoting more

come to the EU market will have to have a

list of spare parts available for at least

seven years after the product is taken out

of the market, as well as access to repair

manuals and design that allows accessing

those spare parts without further

damaging the appliance that you’re trying

to fix, which unfortunately is very

frequent. You need to be able to fix the

things you own: if you can’t fix it, you don’t

really own it.

Unfortunately, the manufacturers have

been able to water down our proposals.

Access to the wider set of spare parts and

to repairer information will be restricted

to what are called ‘professional’ repairers,

which would leave a lot to be desired. For

example, this means that if you need to

replace the light bulb within your fridge,

you as an ordinary citizen might

not be able to buy the light bulb for

your fridge, but a professional

repairer might be able to do that

for you. Which doesn’t make any

sense to us.

Obviously there will be

manufacturers that provide you

with better access, but we need

regulations to be more ambitious.

This is a good start, but we need it

to be more universal in terms of

what you can access and in terms of

what kind of products are included in

these measures. The biggest target for our

work in campaigning on the right to repair

is to have smartphones be regulated

as well.

HS If access to spare parts is limited

to professionals, what constitutes a

professional? Who decides who’s a

professional person?

UV The regulations state that member

states will have to have a register of

professional repairers, which includes

repairers that are insured for the work that

they do. Where such a register doesn’t

exist, it will be up to the manufacturer to

accept or reject a request for spare parts or

access to manuals for professional repairs.

So, it will be up to the manufacturers to

determine whether someone is a

repair and reuse of products and less of a

throwaway economy.

HS That’s European lobbying that you’ve

been doing — have you done much with

the UK government? I know that you’ve

won the backing of the Green Party

and the Liberal Democrats. How have

you been getting on with Labour and

the Conservatives?

UV Last October, in Manchester, we

gathered 59 repair activists from across

the UK who took part in Fixfest, our

national gathering. We co-wrote the

Manchester Declaration, which has been

signed by over 40 community repair

groups and 15 organisations supporting

it, asking for all barriers to repair to be

taken down. [The Greens and

the Liberal Democrats already

support this.] We received

endorsement for the Declaration

from our first two Labour MPs:

Helen Hayes in Brixton and

Tulip Siddiq from Hampstead

and Kilburn.

We have groups around the

country that are actively reaching

out to their MPs from all parties

to invite them to community

repair events and ask them to endorse

the Declaration, so we foresee a lot more

cross-party support on this front.

If it is true that the UK government is

aiming to do better than what Europe is

trying to achieve, then this is a very good

opportunity to ask any manufacturer of

any product that’s sold in the UK market

to make spare parts and repair manuals

available to everyone, right away. There’s

an opportunity to lead in their area, if

only there were the willingness to do it.

That’s what we’re working towards.

The UK, Germany, and Italy have

historically had large manufacturing

sectors, and perhaps it shouldn’t come as

a surprise that when the regulations for

refrigerators, washing machines,

dishwashers and the like were discussed,

there were three countries that were

seen to be blocking the regulations: the

UK, Germany, and Italy. And so we put

”

”

You need to be

able to fix the

things you own:

if you can’t fix it,

you don’t really

own it