Consumer NZ says every year New Zealanders throw out 97,000 tonnes of e-waste. Photo: sylv1rob1/123RF
Some manufacturers actively discourage fixing electronics over replacing them and a right to repair law could help curb the throw away mentality according to a fix-it expert.
Consumer NZ has launched a petition calling on the government to introduce repairability labels - so people will know how long the item they are buying is expected to last and how easy it is to fix.
It would also require manufacturers to provide spare parts.
So far more than 18,000 people have signed the petition.
Consumer NZ said every year New Zealanders chucked out 97,000 tonnes of e-waste; enough toasters to fill Eden Park and the Sky Tower.
Alan Liefting is the managing director at Ecotech Services, which sells re-furbished electronics and he is also a volunteer at the Repair café - where broken and busted items are patched up.
He told Checkpoint he had lots of examples of how he had found it hard to repair items, including how one manufacturer would only sell a part of a microwave oven for $500.
"That sounded fairly suspicious to me, charging more than what the microwave oven is both worth and what it cost for one part, when you can buy them for a fraction of that cost from overseas," Liefting said.
"That to me sounds like active encouragement and preventing the item from being repaired."
Other items such as modern televisions with LCD screens were very delicate and breakable and they could not repair them because the LCD screen itself was not available as a spare part, he said.
"It's just so delicate that to ship it around the world is very expensive. I'm guessing the landed costs for a very expensive TV is relatively cheap and so the insurance company pays out on having the TV scrapped or recycled in our case."
Liefting said there were a lot of things that were not being repaired, due to people upgrading technology.
He said for a number of items Ecotech charged a fee of up to $35 per item in the case of TV's, however, some things were free to recycle.
"Everything that comes in for recycling, we triage, so we can use it for spare parts or try and repair the whole thing and then sell it, especially in terms of desktops and laptops."
Although there had been a societal shift towards using mobile phones for computing requirements, they were still able to sell refurbished desktops, refurbished laptops, refurbished computer monitors and keyboards, he said.
Liefting told Checkpoint it was hard to tell how much technology was put into landfill as there was little data.
"We get some people that come in for items to be recycled and we say they will cost you $5 or $12 or whatever to recycle, and they say, 'Oh, I just might as well put it in in my red bin'."
In some cases customers were willing to pay more, he said.
"Sometimes, more than what an item is worth in order to repair it. This is especially the case with vintage audio equipment, but it's also with some of the commercial products.
"It's quite depressing to see how much stuff can't be repaired for one reason or another, either changes in technology or lack of spare parts, or the fact that it is simply not economic because for one reason, or another labour or spare parts."
Liefting said a right to repair law encouraging manufacturers to make things fixable should be introduced, however, manufacturers could not be blamed themselves.
"Pretty much everybody, our governments, manufacturers and consumers all have a part to play in this," he said.
