In this episode, we discuss commercial repair of gadgets, electronics and home appliances. Most of us can testify, it feels less and less of a possibility these days.

Podcaster Dave Pickering interviews designer and writer John Thackara about how this may be a “temporary blip”. He paints a picture of what local, (re)emergent economies of repair might look like. Thackara’s new book How To Thrive in the Next Economy (Thames & Hudson, 2015) shaped our questions and provides clues for readers.

With input from professional repairers and participants at Restart Parties, we discussed transparency, trust, cost, access to information, informal solutions, as well as the need for repair to be embedded locally in retail. Repeatedly, people told us they would like to learn from the experience of paying for a repair, and not be treated like a number.

Lastly, Ugo mentions the symbiosis between community repair events like Restart Parties and commercial repairs.

The bottom line is, a better relationship with our stuff, often mediated by talented repairers, will improve our quality of life.

The post Restart Podcast Ep 5: How repair economies can thrive (again) appeared first on The Restart Project.