The Fixometer

The “Fixometer” is the engine behind Restarters.net, our growing community of community fixers and organisers. Using our Fixometer tool, members are building a repair knowledge base and logging fixes occurring at the events they run, capturing the environmental and social impact of their work.

Restart HQ group - with lots of stats about repairs and events

We’re using the data we’re recording through Restarters.net in lots of ways. Read on to learn about our work so far and the exciting developments on the way.

We are fixing the world’s relationship with electronics.

The environmental impact of most consumer electronics and electricals is highest when they are manufactured and distributed – before they are even used. Everyday technology users never even see most of these effects. Every time we extend a gadget’s lifetime by fixing, we space out and slow the impacts of manufacture. The fewer new items we buy, the more we limit greenhouse gas emissions, save water and avoid using minerals that are hard to mine and harder to recycle.

So, we keep detailed logs of the fixes we attempt — successful or not — at our community’s repair events around the world. (For more information on the data we collect, take a look at our open data standard.) We then combine this data with our research data of product lifecycle assessments on electronics products.

From these two sets of data (downloadable here and here) we produce detailed analysis on the positive environmental and social impacts of our work. For example, we produce stats on the work our community does and the results of our fixes.

And we produce stats on the impact of our work, in ways that are understandable and engaging.

 

Image of car with statistics on waste and CO2 savings
Waste and CO2 prevented

 

Not only do we measure our environmental impact, but also advocate for more repairable products and pro-repair policies. By analysing the data we record, we’re learning more about why products break and how they could be made easier to fix.

Our Data Workbench let’s you explore the repair data collected by the whole network though a series of quests. Each quest investigates one specific aspect of repair or a particular type of device. It’s a simple way to help us make the case for better products.

The Future

The Fixometer has been in use since 2015 and is now used by more than 600 repair groups. We’ve built up a helpful repository of data on fixes and repairability, and on the positive social and environmental impacts of our work.

But now we’re scaling this up. We’re continuing to build new features to improve our own data capture and extend our reach, and we’re starting work on an open data standard to help us collect even more data in partnership with like-minded repair organisations.

As we generate and combine more and more data on repair, we’ll use this to give us a stronger voice and reinforce our advocacy work with manufacturers and policy makers. If we are strategic, more data can mean more influence.

Get involved

There are lots of ways in which you can help us grow our database of fixes.

  • If you have a device that needs fixing, bring it along to a Restart Party
  • Help us to extend the life of devices by volunteering with us at a Restart Party, or even hosting your own
  • Join us on a quest to explore why our devices break
  • The code is open-source and available at Github.  You can get involved and follow discussion on our roadmap here
  • Get in touch if you are a repair organisation and would like to share your own repair data with the wider repair community

Learn more

Find out more at the links below:

And to keep up to date with our progress, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our newsletter, listen to our podcast and watch this space!