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Repair, don't waste

An international movement created to emphasize the sustainability and cost-effectiveness of repair over replacement.

The modern world runs on electronic systems that are designed to last many years. Tons of natural resources are carved out every day to produce semiconductor chips and other components. These will eventually be mounted on printed circuit boards (PCB) and will effectively become the brain of most pieces of industrial technology. These expensive circuit board assemblies are used in industrial applications to help control our vehicles, production machinery, airplanes, wind turbines, and so on. Typically costing from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars, they are ultimately used to manage power, safety systems, monitoring devices, quality checks, and many other functions.

Replacing faulty industrial technologies for new ones is wasteful, unnecessary, and aggravates the E-waste issue. According to the United Nations University, more than 50 million tons of E-waste are produced globally every year. It’s past due time for the replace-not-repair mentality to be phased out across the business spectrum.  It’s an essential step to eliminating waste, lowering emissions, and saving precious resources.

Created in 2015 by ABI Electronics in the UK, the ‘Repair, don’t waste’ movement seeks to draw the attention of business leaders, academia, and the wider society to the benefits of developing the capabilities to repair rather than replace industrial electronic systems. This website was designed to give access to relevant technology and training for repair, share knowledge, and best practices implemented by leading organisations that are reducing waste, costs and creating quality technical jobs across the world.

Real-life repair success stories