The second-hand route to Sustainability
The importance of reviving the repair ecosystem and resuscitating the neighbourhood repair-wala
By Jaideep Chanda
A colleague’s electric kettle went kaput and she promptly ordered a new one online and the old one went into the garbage. I don’t fault her. Probably Rs 300 was all it would have taken to get the heating element replaced being a common fault, but herein lies the problem. The effort she would take to locate a ‘repair-wala’, have it sent and then collected, would have possibly cost her more than she spent on the new kettle. Provided he had the correct spares. This is one of the reasons why consumers prefer to repair only high cost white goods like refrigerators, rather than low cost items. This in turn has given rise to service aggregators such as Urban Company et al, providing repairs for high value consumer items, but not the low value ones. This is also why the second-hand market for high value items such as cars is more mature than the lower valued items.
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So why does this matter? Goal 12 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to ‘ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns’, to mitigate the root causes of the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Growing consumption, short product life cycles and minor repairs, creates e-waste exponentially, generating both valuable and hazardous materials. It exhorts governments and citizens to improve resource efficiency, reduce waste and pollution, and shape a new circular economy. Per 2019 figures, only 1.7 kgs out the 7.3 kgs e-waste generated globally per capita, was managed in an environmentally sound way primarily due to lack of regulations in developing countries where e-waste is managed mainly by the informal sector, usually in an unsafe way thereby polluting the environment and affecting human health. So if we do not address the e-waste in totality, we will not be able to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns – a prerequisite for an aspiring multi trillion dollar economy. That is why it matters.
To its credit, India, has undertaken several steps to actualise Goal 12, from operationalising the Right to Repair Portal; by notifying the E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022; promulgating the Vehicle Scrappage Policy 2023 and the Battery Waste Management Rules, 2022. These measures, amongst others, is being consolidated under the Government of India campaign called Mission Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) which attempts to influence the demand and supply dynamics to trigger shifts in large-scale industrial and government policies to support sustainable consumption and production.
Prima facie, from a policy analysis perspective, notwithstanding the actions mentioned above, a gap seems to exist when seen at the microeconomic level. The decision to repair at the retail level i.e. at the level of the individual is dependent on a number of factors. These include the cost of the item, the cost of repair, the availability of the repair-wala, availability of spares required to effect the repair, cost of sending and collecting the item to be repaired to and from the repair-wala and the usage of the item to the individual. Out of these, it is the lack of availability of the neighbourhood repair-wala that is possibly the most critical, followed closely by the lack of spares.
The need of the hour is to revive the repair ecosystem and to do so, resuscitate the neighbourhood repair-wala and integrate him into the ecosystem. The stakeholders in this exercise include individuals, sellers, repair-walas, scrap buyers and sellers, transporter aggregators (e.g Porter, Swiggy Genie) and the government itself. The resuscitation could be by incentivising repair shops as a separate category of shops with benefits, or by pulling them into the formal sector by creating a Register of Repairers (maybe under the Right to Repair Portal) which would provide information of repair specialists and their specialisations to customers. Lowering interest rates for loans for purchase of second-hand goods could incentivise buyers to consider this option. Repair hubs could be established in each city, like the ‘transport-nagars’ which have evolved on the outskirts for transporters. Cannibalisation of spares from equipment earmarked for being recycled by smelting or breaking down to core components could be made mandatory. The cannibalised spares could then be stored at the repair hubs for use as and when the items for repair turned up at the repair hub. Presently a lot of the sale and purchase of spares, second-hand goods are over OLX like platforms and on specific Telegram groups e.g. for audiophiles and amateur radio homebrewers. The private sector would also have to step in by aggregating repair facilities, promoting DIY initiatives and makers movements.
Some of these aspects probably already are in vogue in various places in the country at different scales. However, pulling them into the formal sector would accrue benefits and better dissemination of knowledge and democratisation of repair costs. While the Government on its own has taken some steps to implement Goal 12, however the ink is yet to dry on these initiatives and hence too early to pass verdict on them. The individuals and industry who use this opportunity to harness this untapped sector, could be sitting on a gold mine. The key however would be to address the negative mind-set over second-hand products and make second-hand cool once again.
The author is an alumnus of the Takshashila Institution and a technophile.
