Surera Ward has been running Girls Fix It, a tech repair service near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for around four years. In that time, she and her team have got better at understanding the electronic devices that come into their workshop. But fixing them hasn't."It's getting harder and harder to repair different devices," she says.
Electronic waste has become a growing problem around the world as consumers increasingly discard older devices and replace them with new ones encouraged to buy newer models It has led some regulators to step in to reign in the excesses of consumer culture, and to advocate for the right to repair. And for that reason, Perzanowski is a supporter of a multi-pronged approach to fighting for the right to repair."This is a complicated problem that is not going to be solved through any one rule, or any one court case, or through any one piece of legislation," he says.Such consumer-level actions, coupled with top-down regulatory changes, will hopefully change the way tech products are made, sold and used – encouraging more repair, rather than replacement.