4 things a week: Warranty stickers and mindful AI tools for kids

1. World

I was at the Design Council's Design for Planet expert briefing yesterday and as part of the afternoon we broke out into groups discussed how we could encourage more circular use of materials in the UK.

As it stands 100 million tonnes of waste is produce annually in the UK across households, commerce and industry. According to the Design Council, only 8.7% of that is recycled or repurposed in some way.

Discussing how we might be able to shift this figure, the ideas raised included connecting businesses who could benefit from each other’s ‘waste’, educating designers to spec better materials and increase regulations on brands to take more responsibility for the product they are putting on the market. All important for sure, however, I’m not sure they will work. We have such a global supply chain that whilst we produce a vast amount of waste, we don’t produce nearly as much product. A huge amount of the products and materials we consume are imported. Around 25% of building materials, 50% of electronics and the vast majority of our vehicles we drive are shipped in. But when products are no longer needed, we can’t just ship broken product or parts back where they came from.

I question whether we could ever have a circular economy in the UK without on-shoring all production, which is impossible, and so we are reliant on working collectively, globally, which will take time. What we can do right now however, is to reduce new ‘stuff’ and maximise what we already have. It’s so easy to jump straight to recycling when thinking about a circular economy. But we have to start with reuse.

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2. Innovation

How many of you have heard of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act? I didn’t think so. The 1975 Act protects the rights of consumers to be able to repair or upgrade their product, or even simply take it apart for curiosities sake, providing they don’t break the device in the process. So you see those warranty stickers in devices that stop you from even getting near the electronics - once widely used, the US Federal Trade Commission started coming down on companies including Sony and Microsoft in 2018 for using these illegal tactics to stop customers opening up and attempting repairs on their devices. So why do I bring it up now?

Well I was watching a teardown video of the new CMF phone that I posted about a couple of weeks ago and I was surprised to see a great big sticker under the removable cover warning customers “Do not disassembly the battery or other protective parts with authorisation”. What this actually means, I have no idea. But once the sticker is removed, you void your warranty (according to most of the teardown videos at least). I will state that Nothing have not made it specifically clear if that is actually the case, but perhaps the deliberate ambiguity is there way of getting around the Magnuson-Moss Act whilst deterring anyone looking to get busy with a screwdriver. Regardless, this is not a great move from Nothing . And I find it particularly ironic to give your users a screw-driver with every device and then tell them not to make repairs.

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