Right to Repair Scores a Big Win for Circular Economy in NY State

NEW YORK, July 9, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- It is a long road for a Bill to become law in the United States, but a successful floor vote at the Senate is an important milestone. June 10, 2021 saw the right to repair achieve that milestone with a 51-12 vote in favor of the right to repair. It is the first of the state bills to have gotten past committee and to a vote in the Senate. The next step is to take it to legislation in 2022, which is another big challenge.

This is an issue that Techbuyer has been following and playing a small part to support for some time. From an environmental standpoint our work refurbishing, repairing and remanufacturing electronics makes us acutely aware of the precious materials they contain. Even the best recycling cannot recover all of the rare earths in this equipment, many of which are in limited supply. The best answer from an environmental standpoint is to extend the life of equipment.

More than that, we build jobs and livelihoods on making things last longer, delivering value to our customers and doing what we can to conserve resources. Which is why both Techbuyer the company and Techbuyer staff have always supported legislation in favor of this where we can.

In June 2019, we publicized the case for the Fair Repair Act in New York state. We invited New York state residents to write to legislators in favor of publicly available diagnostic and repair information.

In April 2019, all staff at Techbuyer Rochester took action to support Minnesota's Right to Repair Bill by writing to local representatives to say the sector creates good jobs and we would like to see it grow.

"We repair and resell used equipment from a variety of manufacturers. I hear that HF 1138 is coming up for a vote in the State House very soon and I ask you to vote in favor of it. Once passed, we know we can sell and service more equipment and hire more employees locally. Thank you," we wrote.

This being the case, we are obviously delighted by this latest good news in New York. However, we understand that it will be a long road. A lot of Bills do not even make it to a floor vote, so the fact that this did is impressive. However, the legislative process does not even begin until the next legislative season in 2022. Even then it is unclear how long it will take to come into force. A recent example from the automotive industry in Massachusetts is that manufacturers filed a suit in federal court to block the initiative, potentially delaying it by four years.

The hope for electronics is that more and more organizations are seeing the value of circular approaches. This ethos may prompt them to work with the secondary market to extend the life of equipment and save on resources. We are seeing this already with companies like HPE and Dell working with companies like ours to process more servers and preserve more natural resources. With time ticking on how much take, make, waste the world can sustain, everyone is waking up to the advantages of a circular approach. Let's hope we can all work together to make that happen.

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Katie Doyle, Techbuyer, +44 7985719176, k.doyle@techbuyer.com

Helen Blakey, Techbuyer, 07968529676, h.blakey@techbuyer.com

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