A consortium of five knowledge institutes and 16 companies and organisations active in the consumer electronics chain, are going to improve repair practices for consumer electronics. The project ‘Tackling Fixophobia’ has been granted by NOW KIC: Partners for Innovation is one of the partners in this project.

Today, people use more and more consumer electronics, such as smartphones, TVs and other household appliances. These electronics provide important benefits, but the current linear approach to consumer electronics also leads to extensive use of natural resources, CO₂ emissions, health issues, and e-waste.

Unfortunately, the current recycling approach is not able to address these issues. Instead, repair has been identified as a particularly promising strategy to help solve these issues and counter premature obsolescence.

This project aims to enhance trust, acceptance and behaviour of repair practices among all value chain actors of consumer electronics. We aim to do so by developing, testing and combining novel marketing and service strategies, technology-enabled product designs, circular business models, and law and tax solutions. Together, this will ultimately result in a product lifetime extension of consumer electronics.

Consortium partners

This project is a collaboration between Delft University of Technology, Wageningen University, Maastricht University, Erasmus and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Co-funders are ATAG, Bang & Olufsen, Fairphone, Philips Consumer Lifestyle, Stichting OPEN, APPLiA Nederland, Techniek Nederland, het Versnellingshuis NL Circulair!, Bol, KPN, Accenture, Partners for Innovation, Stichting Repair Café International, iFixit US, Consumentenbond and NVRD.

It also includes the cooperation partners Ministry of Economics Affairs and Climate Policy, Rijkswaterstaat, Authority Consumer and Market, and Het Groene Brein.

For more information, please contact Flora Poppelaars.

With this project we contribute to the following Sustainable Development Goals of the UN: