Repairability is a measure of the degree to and ease with which a product can be repaired and maintained, usually by end consumers. Repairable products are put in contrast to

obsolescence Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order. It usually happens when something that is more efficient or less risky r ...

or products designed with

planned obsolescence In economics and industrial design, planned obsolescence (also called built-in obsolescence or premature obsolescence) is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so tha ...

Repairability index

Some private organizations and companies, mostly affiliated with the right to repair movement, assign repairability scores to products as a way of communicating to consumers how easily repairable the product is.

France

Since 2021, all electronic devices sold in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...

have been required to report a ''repairability index'' (french: Indice de réparabilité) which rates how repairable a product is on a scale from 0 to 10, primarily to prevent corporate

greenwashing Greenwashing (a compound word modeled on " whitewash"), also called "green sheen", is a form of advertising or marketing spin in which green PR and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organization's products, aim ...

and encourage environmental transparency. Products are evaluated on 5 key areas: documentation, disassembly, spare parts availability, spare part pricing, and product specifics.

Limitations

The repairability index scoring process isn't bulletproof, though—manufacturers currently self-report their indices to regulatory bodies with little to no government oversight ensuring the index was properly calculated. For example, smartphone and laptop manufacturers can obtain an extra point on the index just by providing consumers with information regarding security or software updates.

Effects

Since France's recently enacted legislation requiring repairability indices, some positive effects have materialized. For instance,

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

now offers consumers a free online repair manual for the for its Galaxy S21+ in an attempt to boost its repairability index. The enforcement of French repairability index laws pushed Samsung to release this manual, something consumers had been requesting for a long time; in contrast, there is no English repair manual for American consumers, as U.S. legislation doesn't incentivize Samsung to release such a manual. This french legislation has applied pressure to tech corporations to increase the repairability of their products and transition to a far more circular economy.

Notable Score

Apple's

iPhone 12 The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini (stylized and marketed as iPhone 12 mini) are a range of smartphones designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. They are the fourteenth-generation, "affordable flagship" iPhones, succeeding the iPhone 1 ...

models scored a 6.0 and its

iPhone 11 The iPhone 11 is a smartphone designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. It is the 13th generation of iPhone, succeeding the iPhone XR, and was unveiled on September 10, 2019 alongside the iPhone 11 Pro at the Steve Jobs Theater in App ...

models scored a 4.5 out of 10 on the repairability index scale; the 2021

MacBook Air The MacBook Air is a line of ultrabook computers developed and manufactured by Apple Inc. It consists of a full-size keyboard, a machined aluminum case, and, in the more modern versions, a thin light structure. The Air was originally positi ...

scored a 6.5 and the 2021 MacBook Pro scored a 5.6 on the scale. Google's

Pixel 4a The Pixel 4a and Pixel 4a (5G) are a pair of Android smartphones designed, developed, and marketed by Google as part of the Google Pixel product line. They collectively serve as mid-range variants of the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL. The Pixel 4a was ...

scored a 6.3. So far, the average repairability score has hovered around 5.4 out of 10.

References