That's for the new stuff that isn't designed to be repaired.

My circa 1990s freezer broke a couple years ago. First guy quoted us "not worth repairing". Second guy did the job for two hours of $100/hr labor and a $60 part. Told us that if it were a modern device it wouldn't have been worth it because of the labor, but the freezer was old enough that everything that can break was designed to be easily and quickly repaired.

The unfortunate irony in this story is that repairing stuff usually helps the environment, but in this case probably not, since older freezers consume quite a lot of energy, they were built when electricity was cheaper and using less optimized technology.

That being said, I'm fully in favour of repairable phones, the energy cost is not such an issue for such low power device.

I also think that todays dishwashers, washing machines, cooking plates, which are typically thrashed witin 10 years would benefit a lot from repairability if they are built to last.

It's a hard to say, but it's generally better to keep something at the consumer level running because of the cost of carbon manufacturing and shipping the product.

Additionally I happen to live in an area with a very heavy use of renewables, so the carbon cost is even lower.

But now you're just making the argument for repairing it yourself. How many people could make enough money in even a full day to recover the replacement cost of a $1000 appliance, rather than spending up to that long to fix it themselves?

And the parts are only hundreds of dollars because the appliances aren't repairable. Obviously if you have to replace a third of the appliance instead of just the bearing because that isn't sold as a separate part, repairs will be much less cost effective.