The Future of Repairs

Episode Transcript

ROMA AGRAWAL

The UK has a serious electrical waste problem, generating the second highest amount of e-waste per capita in the world.

MARK MIODOWNIK

It's hugely damaging to the environment. It creates a lot of pollution in the air to the locals. The last estimate is like 30 to 40% global warming is the stuff we buy.

ROMA AGRAWAL

But what if we were to prevent waste happening in the first place?

I'm Roma Agrawal and you're listening to Create the Future from the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. In this episode, we look at repair culture.

MARK MIODOWNIK

If there's a way to interact with people about materials, I've done it.

ROMA AGRAWAL

Today's guest, Mark Miodownik believes change is possible through a strong culture of repair.

MARK MIODOWNIK

I've been fixing stuff from a very early age and it's sort of a liberation, not feeling that if something breaks, you're just helpless.

ROMA AGRAWAL

As UCL Professor of Materials and Society, he leads their ‘Big Repair Project’, which looks to develop the right to repair government policy and helps push the UK towards meeting key environmental targets. In his book ‘Stuff Matters’, Mark talks about being mugged and stabbed as a schoolboy.

MARK MIODOWNIK

He said “I've got a knife” and he showed this sort of pointy thing through his pocket, a razor blade wrapped in tape.

ROMA AGRAWAL

And how this formative experience holds some of his early fascination in materials.

MARK MIODOWNIK

You realise that the materials are the key to, kind of all, of the stuff that we love.

ROMA AGRAWAL

So join us as we unpack the barriers holding back the growth of the circular economy, transforming ideas of what repair can mean and the future of material science.

So thank you so much Mark for joining us. Can you introduce yourself for our listener?

MARK MIODOWNIK

Yeah, I am Mark Miodownik. I'm a materials scientist at University College London. I've spent quite a lot of my life very, very passionately enthusiastic about materials and how they interact with our lives and determine everything about us, in fact.

ROMA AGRAWAL

And award-winning author.

MARK MIODOWNIK

Yeah, I've written a book, I've done a TV series about materials. If there's a way to interact with people about materials, I've done it.

ROMA AGRAWAL

So materials are obviously a big part of your life. Now you've come into the world of repair. So, do you have any stories or anecdotes of fixing something or breaking something and not being able to fix it or anything like that?

MARK MIODOWNIK

I've been fixing stuff from a very early age. When I was younger it was really just looking at my mum and dad and how they approached things because we didn't have a lot of money, so if things broke the first thing was to mend them. My dad was always underneath the car trying to mend it. I was just fascinated by that. I just thought, you know, these machines are who we are, like, we travel the world because we have engines. They're an expression of us, right? Humans. And getting to know those engines and getting to know my bicycle, at the time, I mean mending a puncture was an early thing for me and I just, it's so freeing not to be held back by the fact that you got a flat tire. And now I've sort of got kids myself, and the number of times one of their toys, favourite toys breaks is quite high. So you know, I remember a sort of very favourite Star Wars lightsaber stopped making the “zzzz” noise and stopped lighting up in the way that a lightsaber should light up. And so, yeah, quite quickly we're together, we're trying to get in there with screwdrivers, understand whether it's just a little connection, which it was, that had just broken loose, and then put it back together again, it all works and everyone's feeling the force.

ROMA AGRAWAL

And you were stabbed and somehow that led to all of this obsession with material science.

MARK MIODOWNIK

Yeah. So, no, I was going home from school and a guy came up to me on the Hammersmith platform where I was standing and said “can you give me your wallet?” and I was like “What? What?” really surprised and then he, it was like in broad daylight, so loads of people around and I was really surprised. And then he sort of, he said “I've got a knife” and I was, I mean I don't know why he doubted him, but I did doubt him and he showed this sort of pointy thing through his pocket, he said “I've got - I have, I have!” and I was like, even then I thought that's just your finger. Then my train came in, so I just sort of pushed past him and got on the train, thinking nothing of it really, except that I felt an excruciating pain in my back and realised that he had stabbed me, as I got on the train. And then I thought well, God, that really hurts, but I wonder how bad it is. I'm not sort of falling to the ground. I sort of didn't realise at the time that stab wounds could be - you just lose a lot of blood and perhaps in this situation that's what was happening and I wasn't losing consciousness. So, I sort of just got help and then ended up going to hospital having 13 stitches. So it was a close call. And then, yeah, when the police caught the guy who did it, they showed me the weapon and it wasn't a sort of, big sort of, you know knife that you might imagine. It was a thin sliver of metal, a razor blade wrapped in tape. I was just absolutely amazed that such a thin sliver of metal could almost kill you. Like how powerful are materials then, if they can do that. So ever since then I've been, you know, absolutely fascinated with materials and kind of what they can do and so, you realise that the materials are the key to, kind of, all of the stuff that we love and not just that, but they're also the key to understanding how to repair them. It's sort of a liberation. You know, the actual not feeling that if something breaks, you're just helpless has always been one of my things like wow, I love that. Even today, you know, like with my kids, you know, whenever something breaks a toy, you know we're not helpless as a family, we're like, OK, let's mend it.

ROMA AGRAWAL

We talk a lot about, we in my house, because I have a four year old, but I think ‘weee’ mean something slightly different to you. Could you tell us a little bit about what that acronym is and what the problem related to it is?

MARK MIODOWNIK

Well, the ‘weee’ is, weee with three E's is the waste electricals and electronics that every person produces because they have electronics and electrical stuff that comes into their house into their life and then it breaks and they repair it or they get someone to repair it. But at some point they feel like they have to get rid of it and that waste, which could be a hair dryer or a kettle or it could be a phone. It could be a washing machine, a shaver and they're all ‘weee’ waste when they're finally thrown out the door and the UK produces the second most in the world of ‘weee’ waste per person. We create a lot of waste, electronic waste and it's hugely damaging to the environment, because the materials inside them are wonderful when it's going, right? These strange metals that allow your computer to work or your smartphone to work or get your hair dryer to work or your hair straighteners to work. All these things, their mined. You know, they’re mined all over the world in different countries; Africa, Russia, Canada, America, UK and these mines displace a lot of material, it creates a lot of pollution in the air to the locals. You have to use a lot of water so, that pollutes the water. Then they're sort of refined in other places and that’s again, lots of energy, lots of water, lots of pollution. And finally it becomes, you know, into these tiny and tinier parts into your life in a product, you know. So it's back story. It's huge. It's a huge amount of manufacture and then if it only stays in your life for a year before you throw it out and buy a new one, well, you can imagine, you and I we’re all fuelling this enormous amount of, kind of, activity in the world, which is both on the one hand, incredible. Like, how ingenious are we that we can do this? And on the other hand, it's increasingly worrying because the ‘weee’ waste is just getting bigger and bigger, and then the other side of the coin, which is when that ‘weee’ waste is collected well, often people are throwing it in the bin, that includes batteries, which then I'm afraid cause fires in the waste disposal places, a fire every week in the UK in a waste disposal, because people are throwing stuff in their normal bin, which they shouldn’t be. But then, even when you unfortunately, even if you separate it into ‘weee’ waste and then you try and recycle that you find very little of it is economically recyclable. So, it ends up unfortunately not going back into products mostly but into a pile somewhere in the world exported to unfortunate people who perhaps don't have as good job security or environmental security, and so then the world has created a lot of these products for our delight, but we haven't really thought through, I'm afraid, a system that is sustainable.

ROMA AGRAWAL

So what is the circular economy and why is that important in this conversation?

MARK MIODOWNIK

So if you think well, what's the solution? ‘Cause actually, you might experience, anyone listening to this podcast, might be experiencing a sense of having accelerated the amount of waste they produce and that's the reality. So headphones for instance, you know, have a shorter and shorter lifespan and phones, you know. So what can we do? Well, the circular economy is saying, well, we're not going to keep digging stuff out of mines in the world. It costs energy, creates CO2 emissions. It's contributing to global warming massively, like the last estimate, it's like 30 to 40%. Global warming is the stuff we buy. We've got to stop. So let's just say we stopped tomorrow, mining stuff. So the only material you can make stuff out of is the stuff that we put in the ‘weee’ waste, imagine that. So you use the ‘weee’ waste to make new headphones, new hair dryers, new toasters, new smartphones. Well, it makes total sense, right? But it's actually really difficult and there's almost no company that can do it at the moment. But if you did do it and that's the direction of travel for this century, then what you have is a circular economy. So you have a product, you repair it through its lifetime so it lasts as long as possible. When it finally breaks, it goes into a manufacturing situation, which then remanufactures new products from that waste, and that's called a circular economy.

ROMA AGRAWAL

Amazing and you've set up the UCL's big repair project, so can you tell us a little bit about that project and why you set it up?

MARK MIODOWNIK

It’s not just me, it's a whole set of researchers here at UCL, including Danielle Purkiss, who really runs that website and is incredibly influential in getting that to go. But together, a lot of us here at UCL have been kind of trying to workout, how we can move towards circular economy and the first thing is to understand why it is that people throw things away and why they break so often. Because when you do the calculations, it's really obvious that if you can get your smartphone to last instead of two years, or which is the average. 10 years, you immediately cut the pollution and all the kind of mining that has to happen, to make five smartphones that would replace each one of the ones, rather than one. So, why can't we keep a smartphone for 10 years? And the answer is, you need repair. If you Google ‘Big Repair Project’ you can join and what we want to do is understand what products are coming into your life, ‘weee’ products, like small things; kettles, toasters, smartphones. Big things, washing machines and so on. And we want to know how long they'd stay in your life and when they leave, when you have to throw them away, why? Why do you have to throw them away? Is it that, for instance, repair is too expensive, which is one of the big barriers people say, well, you know, the washing machine breaks and they'll get someone to look at and well it's cheaper to buy a new one, so you might as well throw it away, but of course, you're throwing away a lot of CO2 emissions as well, but that's not factored into the price of the new one unfortunately at the moment. Ditto your smartphone. Ditto your hair dryer. Ditto your kettle. All these things and so the other thing that people notice is that if you were to get something repaired, you're not really sure how much further it's going to last. So you might think, oh, I'm going to spend half the amount of money for a new one. But, you know, maybe it’ll only last year and that feels bad. Whereas I buy a new one, then it will last two. I don’t know, whatever mental calculations people are making, we want to know. What it is that's stopping you repairing your stuff and keeping it in use for longer because it's the single most important thing you can do to help with climate change.

ROMA AGRAWAL

One of the things I really love about the team, from what I've seen, is that there's people from engineering, from science and from the arts as well. So you've got a big mix of different disciplines and why does that matter for this project?

MARK MIODOWNIK

Yeah, we have, we’ve got a multidisciplinary team, we’ve got people from behaviour change and we’ve got people from mechanical engineering, material science, design, architecture in fact. And the reason why it all matters is because when we really sat down and analysed what it is to feel like you can repair things, that repair becomes the first option and the cheapest option. It's actually not about you having skills or you having access to someone with skills. It's actually a whole system and what is that system? Well, the system is bigger than just that company and just that product and just your home. What it is, so when people make a product and they import it into this country or you make it in this country, it has to conform to certain legal requirements about safety and it has to have a warranty, it's not gonna break immediately and those are government regulations and they're there for a reason, to stop people ripping you off and also to protect your home from fires and from yourself, right. So these were put into place because in the past, those things did happen and they're very good things for government to do, this is what the government should do. Now the government is part of the system, so you have to understand how to influence the government for future, maybe, laws that we want to put in place to increase repair and then you have the local authority. Your local authority actually will collect most of the stuff coming out of your house for free. Now, why does it do that? Well, you pay council tax, so it's sort of in there, but actually a lot of this stuff costs a lot more than that. So why would they do that? They're part of the system to, the collection and if they don't provide the collection, which mostly ‘weee’ is not a provided collection. You'll end up putting it in the black bin and then that's a really bad situation. So if we want to try and get that stuff into the circular economy, we have to talk to local authorities. We have to talk to the government and we have to have the language and the understanding of how they operate. So that's not just something that a specialist material scientists would know. That's someone who understands how things flow through an economy. But then we also have to talk to people and understand how they make decisions about a particular product and that of course means you need to understand behaviour change. Then we have to understand there's this thing called emotional, kind of, attachment to certain things. So people will repair things for much longer than others because they're emotionally attached to them. So for instance, a watch or a family heirloom. Even washing machines, some people are very proud of their washing machine they had it for 30 years, they'll keep it going for a long time, because their parents, you know, died and bequeathed it to them and you might think, oh, that's weird, but actually that's where the arts and humanities really understand emotion and how we interact with engineering in our lives. And I think that there's a big kind of gap in the engineering vocabulary, which is totally understandable because you know, mostly engineers are into the technical side of things and we need very good technical people. So instead of saying to engineers “look, you need not only understand behaviour but you need to understand emotional design.” Why don't we just get people who know those topics and get them involved in the project? So, you can see that you need a big set of people to really understand this topic well and that's what we've assembled.

ROMA AGRAWAL

And it's a really huge topic because right now you've just mentioned government and policy at all different levels. You've mentioned manufacturers and you've mentioned the person itself, the citizen. So I want to kind of explore those three levels with you in a little bit more detail. So if we start off with policy, first of all, can you tell us a little bit about what is good policy, what is bad policy, and then explain to us what the right to repair means?

MARK MIODOWNIK

Good and bad policy it's a difficult one because it depends who you are, I suppose. But policy has to kind of cater for the manufacturer, so it has to make manufacturing and provision of goods not so difficult and so onerous that they don't want to do it because people want these products and in fact they make their lives happier. So there's all that sort of part of the policy. Then there's the policy of the products coming into your home and being sold to you for a fair price and being safe and not falling apart immediately, so this through warranty and health and safety of electricals and so on. And then you've got the waste directives, which is like, well, ok, if we're creating a lot of waste, of course, the government needs to get involved, understand how to avoid that. And this is where the right to repair comes in because they've realised that essentially manufacturing has got so good, so efficient at producing incredible goods into our lives that they're coming in at such a rate that that's why the UK has become this incredible producer of ‘weee’ waste. So you don't want in a sense say well, that's bad. Manufacturers should not be so, kind of, create such alluring and wonderful products you think? Yeah, no, you should let them do that. But now we're going to say to you, but we want those amazing products to last longer and we want them to be repairable so that it kind of, then when they get broken, inevitably there is an option to repair that is easy. And also if you think about repair, it's inherently a local activity. So it's either you or someone who lives in your local facility coming and that's creating jobs and income and an economy. So if we think about the levelling up agenda in this country, the UK, there's a big concern that there’s not enough high paid jobs in certain regions, repair would do that, right. So ‘cause most, most of the life of an object is in people's homes. If you pass legislation to make repair easier and cheaper then you're actually passing a law to get more jobs everywhere, all across the country. So that's what governments are thinking about. And they brought in a law called the right to repair in 2021, which was to say, actually, we're concerned that manufacturers don't spend enough time making things repairable, and therefore, pump priming the local economy and we're going to make you have, for instance, spare parts available for 10 years, we want you to make them available to small local repairers as well as citizens. This is what the right to repair laws have been doing, but it's very limited in the UK, so it only covers a few goods like fridges and washing machines, doesn't cover smartphone for instance, doesn't cover a laptop. And I think this is an error, because those are the fast moving goods that are really producing huge amounts of waste and they're also ones in which people have an emotional attachment and no one really, mostly wants to give away their smartphone and buy a new one. I mean, I know, I know some people love to have the latest thing, but, in general, it's pain, but they die and they die on purpose. And I say this sort of with certainty, because there's something called designed obsolescence. So you know that the battery, which is mostly made of lithium in a smartphone or a laptop, will only last a certain amount of time, usually two to three years. If you're a manufacturer, then you know that in two to three years you'll have to change the battery. You should make that easy for the customer, right? But they've actually started to glue them in and to use screwdrivers that no one has at home, and even are difficult to find anywhere. And that is clearly intentional, to make it harder for you to repair and easier for you to buy a new one. So this is what the legislation needs to do, it needs to kind of persuade manufacturers. “No, no, no, no, no. If you want to meet your climate obligations, if you want to meet your environmental obligations, what you need to do is make repair easier. And you need to make these goods last longer. And still make money still create lovely. Things, but no, you can't make things designed to fail” so that's what legislation is doing and that's what the right to repair laws are designed to do.

ROMA AGRAWAL

We've moved from kind of policy to the responsibility or the design of manufacturers. Now as an engineer, what I'm really hearing is that you're almost changing your design criteria, right? Like, when you want to design a phone, a product, you've got a list of things that you want to consider, and we're now saying to manufacturers. “Well, actually you need to consider where your materials are coming from. Is it repairable? How long is it going to last?” So are we educating our engineers, our designers to have that mindset in the education system and how much is that going to really change the way things are being done at the moment? Are we ready for that change?

MARK MIODOWNIK

Yeah we are educating them, especially at UCL and most of the UK universities in terms of engineering education and that's been put in the education not just by individual lecturers but also the engineering councils and the bodies, such as the Royal Academy of Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Associations. They are all insisting that if you can have a degree accredited then you have to include this. So the education bit is going in there. I think change is going to be slow because it's more than just knowing that you've got to do it. It's actually been able to make money out of it. And so this is where the economy in the circular economy comes in. You can understand the circular system. But, it won't happen unless people are making money out of it and at the moment manufacturers make money out of selling new goods. They don't make that much money out of repairing goods or even enabling other people, who are not part of their company, to repair them. You might say well, surely they make money out of selling them spare parts and so on, but that bit is actually quite difficult. So what happens is young engineers, young designers, go into these companies with this intention of like, ok, well, we've got a mission here, we've got to redesign everything so it lasts longer, it’s repairable, because we can do something about the 30 to 40% of those emissions. And then they get in those companies and they realise, but hold on a minute we need to make money out of this, so how are we going to make money out of this? And that's where I think there's a lot of pushback within the companies, understandably, it's an existential problem for them, ‘cause they feel like if they move too soon, for instance, their rival who isn't doing it, might make more money. So they then look to government to say, well, look, you need to level the playing field and say that everyone has to do this. And that's where that, the legislation comes in, of course, so that really is basically then, you know, you have to have a legislation in there, then all the companies will do it and then the competition problem, which is how to make money out of it without your rivals beating you, then is slightly eased. But even so, it's still problematic because in the case of a big manufacturing company, essentially what we're saying to them is you're not gonna make most of your money in the future out of making stuff. You're gonna make most of your money in the future about repairing it and keeping it going for longer and so you need to change your whole operation because at the moment what they've done is make goods so cheap, by just innovating so amazingly globally. So, a washing machine or a phone goes around the world twice before it comes into your house, like it's being made in somewhere, bits of it and they are assembled and then they're put somewhere else and it's all lean - it's all incredibly high quality manufacturing and incredible processes, really well controlled, and then it arrives in your house and for like the price of a meal out for a family you can buy a washing machine. Like what the hell? How's that possible? That's amazing! But now, of course we realise that, that can't be the future, unfortunately, that can't be. Unfortunately, you have to actually probably increase the cost of the initial product in order to decrease the environmental impact.

ROMA AGRAWAL

Can you tell me a little bit about your phone? ‘Cause I know you have a fairly unique smartphone. Tell us why you like it and what it does that's slightly different than your, I guess, day-to-day manufacturers we've heard of.

MARK MIODOWNIK

It's not that unique, it's a Fairphone. A company in the Netherlands, who decided to do something about the smartphone problem and designed obsolescence. So what they said is, and it doesn't sound revolutionary, it basically says “if you buy a phone from us, a smartphone, it will have all the functionality of the normal smartphone, but it will have a few extras. One is, you'll be able to change the battery whenever you want.” Oh my goodness. Wow. What a luxury. I now, I have two batteries and I swap them out when I, if I'm going somewhere I don't need to bring my charger, I just bring the second battery. I can change my battery in 10 seconds. This is engineering. This is good engineering. This is circular economy engineering. Not just that, but they source their minerals inside the phones from fair places which don't rely on slavery or excessive degradation of the environment. So they're doing ethical supply of their minerals into their phones, and they're also, they've made their phone modular. So, I can change the screen. If I drop my phone, I break the screen, I just order a screen and I can change it and they even send you, when you buy the phone, they send you the tools. How cool is that? They send you the tools because they want to keep the phone for as long as possible, and they're proud of their phone. Like, what I find really puzzling in a way about some of the kind of business models that are prevalent these days, is that they'll sell you something in a really exciting way with an advert that cost a lot of money, for Christmas let's say. Fully knowing that they actually probably will want to sell you the same thing next year. They don't have any interest in you keeping that for longer. Really. And that's sad, isn't it? I mean, if you're an engineer involved in that and basically you kind of want things to break after the first year, you wouldn't want anything to be like that. So why is it that we put up with this with the electrical goods?

ROMA AGRAWAL

It's a good question, I think buildings that last for a year or even five years or 10 years would be completely unacceptable. But, we seem to have a very different mindset, we almost think of these as a consumer product, right, rather than I guess a piece of engineering or infrastructure that we need to exist with.

MARK MIODOWNIK

I think therein comes another bit of our project, which is that, having linguists involved because it turns out that the word consumer is as big a part of the problem as the business model. We're routinely referred to as consumers. When you hear news programmes, when you hear the government talking about citizens, really what they talk about if you listen is consumers. And they say consumers need to start buying stuff and we hope that there will be consumer confidence, which basically means, buy more stuff. Now, that's a kind of strange thing because what that basically says is, in a capitalist economy, your role is to buy stuff. We're even going to call you by that name, your role is a consumer. And I think that this of course means that when you buy stuff and it breaks and you buy more stuff, you don't feel bad. You think like you're doing your citizen's job, that's what you’re meant to do and in fact, they'll tell you this. When new regulations come in for new environmental events for automobiles, they immediately say to people get rid of your old car, buy a new electric car, they immediately tell you to consume more. But we know that's fueling incredible pollution and incredible climate change. So there is a real problem here, in the way in which consumerism has been basically fuelling behaviours in many, many countries globally that are essentially detrimental to our own existence and we really have to stop and I think the first thing to do is to stop calling ourselves consumers. We should be calling ourselves something else like restorers, repairers, conservers. Because then if my role is to conserve, to restore, to repair, I'm gonna do that for the planet too, perhaps.

ROMA AGRAWAL

I think I said this in the very first episode we did on knitting, that the jumpers that I've knitted, I'm never going to get rid of, because you know, when you make something with your own hands or repair it, then it completely changes your relationship to that object. And I wanted to know a little bit more about this citizen science aspect of your projects. You've talked a little bit about how people can kind of log into your website and report stuff, but I understand you're also looking at repair cafes. So can you tell us a little bit about what we can do, if I didn't know where to start with a broken blender or something, what can I do?

MARK MIODOWNIK

Yeah. So I think that's where we've realised that the home is actually not the best place to kind of draw a circle around a circular economy of repair, because actually to have access to a set of skilled people with a workshop in a situation that's on your high street is really valuable. So these things called repair cafes are popping up all over the UK and at UCL we've now got a UCL repair cafe, for our students because they're increasingly needing stuff to be repaired like laptops and smartphones, which they don't have the money to repair, to buy new, and they they go to the the local repair cafe and that makes total sense, right? And then you have the sense of community. So this is where repair as a system is so important, like who facilitates those repair cafes, often you'll find it's these very enthusiastic people who are community minded who are doing it for nothing. They're not charging anyone and I think, what repair in these repair community cafes are doing is bringing people together in a way to say look, all this, technologies are shared endeavour. It's our shared inheritance. So we should kind of share knowledge and share our ability to repair them and you do it in a setting like a community setting.

ROMA AGRAWAL

On a topic that seems quite engineering-y or materials-y, we've talked about government policy, local authority policy. We've talked about manufacturers, we've talked about people and citizen science and you know, the emotions and happiness and a family and lightsabers and the force. Very, very importantly. And I think that that's really showing us that, you know, engineering is all of the above and it affects all of the above. And you know, we need to stop thinking in this kind of bigger, faster, stronger sort of mindset with engineering and think about longevity and repairability and stuff. So, what do you hope to see happen next? How do you think the landscape will look in 10 years?

MARK MIODOWNIK

Oh in 10 years, things will have changed a lot. Basically consumerism is getting to a crisis where it essentially is going to die, because consumerism itself basically means consuming the earth and we know we know where that goes. So what we're seeing is that companies are realising this and they're starting to change and understand how they can make money, create wonderful engineering products, but not harm the environment. So within 10 years, I fully expect that most of the major manufacturers will be, if not already circular. Basically, understanding that their role in life, just to make you consume stuff is not what they should be doing and what they will do and it's not how they'll make their money. It's not what the shareholders will want them to do because they will be liable for all the damage of climate change if they continue. The reality of the climate change and the pollution issues, and therefore the migration of people, will just force that change. So the question is, can we do it in an orderly way or will systems fall apart before they're mended back? And I couldn't predict which way that's gonna go.

ROMA AGRAWAL

Yes, it feels like a bit of a mixed picture and then I guess for us as consumers, one of the things that I mean, I feel like I have some awareness, but I'm going to do this even more now that we've had this conversation is looking at what I'm buying, where do the materials come from? Is it repairable? And so on. Are there good resources that people listening to the podcast can access and say OK, this is where I can buy a better phone or a better blender or you know, where can we find good practice?

MARK MIODOWNIK

So this is something that we're talking with the government about. So some countries have moved to a system where the point of sale right next to the price, you have a repairability score and this happens in France already. So you know, as you're buying it, ok this has got a one star out of five repairability or five out of five. That to me feels like a fair way to do this. So that's where we need to go and the companies could do it voluntarily, they're not gonna voluntarily. So they're gonna have to have laws to make them do it, which is right to repair laws. So at the moment, it hasn't happened in the UK. So, as you say, shoppers, citizens, it's very hard to find the right information, but what I do, so I had to buy a sandwich maker for my nephew because he's just gone to university. I said you need a sandwich maker, is I looked around all the sandwich makers and I kept looking for the one that had any comment about repairability. And I found one. Found one that actually guaranteed it’d be repairable for 10 years. And I thought, well, you know, it wasn't the cheapest one, but I'm gonna get that one because in general, they're gonna carry that lovely sandwich maker around for the rest of their life. I hope. And they'll still be making sandwiches when I'm dead and thinking of me, hopefully and having kept it going all their life, because why buy a new sandwich maker when you've got one? Like, just keep it going. Repair it.

ROMA AGRAWAL

You've been listening to Create the Future, a podcast from the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering and Peanut and Crumb. This episode was presented by me, Roma Agrawal and was produced by Tess Davidson. Look out for future episodes with conversations from pioneering engineers, designers, technologists and thinkers. If you've enjoyed this episode, why not listen to our conversation with artist and materials engineer Zoe Laughlin on everyday engineering.

ZOE LAUGHLIN

There's as much science and engineering in how to make the perfect cup of tea as there is in a jet engine.

ROMA AGRAWAL

To find out more, follow QEPrize on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. See you next time.