2024-01-15 19:43:55
There is a heartwarming video online. You can see it: a graying couple, married for decades and obviously in love as on the first day. They are asked why very few marriages last as long as theirs these days. They look at each other briefly. Then the woman answers: because broken things used to be repaired and not thrown away. What was the norm two generations ago is no longer a given today. Mend, solder, putty what is broken.
This applies to love – but also to the world of consumption. In the last century, “fast fashion” and a certain “stinginess is cool” mentality meant that buying new electronics and fashion suddenly became apparently cheaper than repairing them. But at some point not only the cheap became the standard, but also the less durable. The term “planned obsolescence”, i.e. a desired or intended aging of goods, came into being in the 1930s to boost sales in the United States after the Great Depression. The throwaway society was born.
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On November 21st last year, the EU Parliament voted with a large majority in favor of a directive that is intended to counteract this throwaway mentality, the “right to repair”. In most cases, manufacturers should therefore be obliged to offer repairs within the guarantee period. Spare parts should be more easily available and the products should be manufactured in a way that is easier to repair. According to figures from the Commission, 35 million tonnes of waste are generated in the EU every year due to prematurely disposed of consumer goods. In addition, there are 30 million tons of wasted resources and 261 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions. And people also lose money by choosing to buy new instead of repairing: the total in the EU is said to be almost twelve billion euros per year.
This text comes from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
However, the proposed law does not yet refer to fashion. The textile industry creates a lot of waste. The clothing industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world, with four billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions, or eight percent of global emissions, according to 2021 figures from Ademe, the French authority for ecological transition.
France has therefore already created government incentives for the repair of clothes: people there receive between six and 25 euros for cobbler or tailor services – a subsidy that also benefits local crafts and secures jobs. There, a private, non-profit and government-recognized organization called Refashion is responsible for the entire circular economy of the French textile industry. On-site repairs are also arranged. The model is financed by companies paying into a pot in the spirit of extended producer responsibility.
VAT rate reduced
Meanwhile, Sweden and Belgium have reduced the VAT rate on repairs, a simple and quick way to achieve similar results without a lot of bureaucracy.
Buying new products is only cheaper if you don’t take all the costs into account. Some brands themselves have long recognized this. The sporting goods manufacturer Puma wrote in a report in 2012 that companies should take into account the costs that nature incurs through their business activities and ultimately pay them. The report also stated that although these costs are not currently being incurred, they may be in the future.
In the Veja shoemaker’s workshop, not only models from our own brand end up, but also those from others. : Image: Adobe Stock
Back then, people were already expecting a kind of environmental tax, which now, twelve years later, will actually come into force soon: According to the EU textile strategy, from 2025 onwards, manufacturers will be responsible for their products across the entire value chain – even if they become waste. Garbage will therefore be even more expensive in the future.
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