Check repairability before you buy, like the French label
A product's lifespan is decided before you even open the box. Checking how repairable it is — the way France's official score does — keeps things working for years.
By the time a product is on the shelf, most of its environmental story is already written. A device you can open, diagnose and mend might last a decade; an identical-looking one that’s glued shut becomes landfill the moment its battery sags or a single part fails. The repairability of a thing is one of the most powerful green choices you can make — and almost nobody checks it, because until recently there was nothing to check.
That’s changed. France’s repairability index has been printing a clear out-of-ten score on electronics since 2021, iFixit publishes teardown scores for thousands of products, and the EU’s own right-to-repair measures and labelling are arriving across the bloc. So you can now do in fifteen minutes what used to take an engineering degree: find out whether spare parts exist, whether the battery is replaceable, and whether you’ll need a special tool just to get inside.
The honest caveat is that a high score only pays off if repair actually happens — the label makes a product fixable, not fixed. So treat the check as half the habit, and knowing your local repair café or a relevant iFixit guide as the other half. Choose the repairable option, then be willing to use that option when the day comes. Done together, it’s the difference between owning something for two years and owning it for ten.
How to do it
- Before buying a phone, laptop, appliance or power tool, look up its repairability — France's 'indice de réparabilité' scores many products out of 10.
- Search iFixit for a teardown and repair score: it shows whether the thing is screwed together (good) or glued and sealed shut (bad).
- Check that spare parts are actually sold, and for how many years — manufacturers increasingly state a spare-parts availability period.
- Prefer designs with standard screws, a user-replaceable battery, and modules you can swap, over glued, soldered or proprietary-tool-only builds.
- Lean toward brands built around repair — Fairphone, Framework, Miele, Bosch — and keep the manual and any included spare clips or tools.
Pro tips & pitfalls
- From 2025 the EU is rolling out its own repairability scoring and 'right to repair' rules, so the label will appear on more products across Europe — look for it.
- A great repair score is wasted if nobody fixes it: pair the buy with knowing your nearest repair café or iFixit guide so you'll actually use it.
What it's good for
Good for the planet
- Saves resources A repairable device gets a new battery or screen instead of a whole new unit, sparing all the metals, plastic and energy of a replacement.
- Cuts waste Fixable goods stay in use for years longer, keeping a phone, blender or washing machine out of the e-waste pile far longer than a sealed one.
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