Stopping planned obsolescence requires action on two fronts: changing how you buy, maintain, and repair your own devices, and supporting the laws and market shifts that force manufacturers to build things that last. Neither approach works alone. Personal choices keep individual products alive longer, while legislation reshapes the incentives that make short-lived products profitable in the first place. Here’s what’s actually working on both sides.
New Laws Are Already Forcing Change
The most powerful tool against planned obsolescence is regulation, and the European Union has moved aggressively. In May 2024, the EU replaced its older ecodesign rules with a far broader regulation that covers almost all goods sold in the EU market, not just energy-related products. The new requirements target durability, repairability, upgradability, and recyclability across categories including electronics, furniture, textiles, tires, and chemicals.
Two specific rules hit planned obsolescence directly. Starting in 2027, manufacturers must make portable batteries in consumer electronics removable and replaceable by the user at any point during the product’s life. That single requirement eliminates one of the most common ways phones, tablets, and earbuds become disposable: a degraded battery glued inside a sealed case. Separately, new ecodesign rules for smartphones and tablets took effect in 2025, requiring manufacturers to provide operating system updates for at least five years from the date the last unit of a model is sold. Software abandonment, where a perfectly functional phone becomes insecure or incompatible because the manufacturer stops updating it, has been one of the quieter forms of planned obsolescence. A five-year update floor changes that calculus.
The EU also now requires a digital product passport for covered goods, an electronic record of a product’s environmental footprint, recycled content, and circularity information. Companies that destroy unsold consumer products must publicly disclose how many items they discard each year and why. These transparency measures make it harder to treat products as disposable without public accountability.
Right to Repair in the United States
U.S. progress is patchier but real. Multiple states have passed right-to-repair laws covering electronics, and federal momentum is building. One key barrier has been the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which made it illegal to bypass software locks even for repair purposes. The most recent round of DMCA exemptions, finalized in October 2024, now explicitly allows consumers to circumvent digital locks on consumer devices, motorized vehicles, marine vessels, agricultural equipment, and medical devices when the purpose is diagnosis, maintenance, or repair.
That matters because many modern products use software locks to prevent third-party repair. A tractor that won’t start after a part replacement until the manufacturer’s proprietary tool authorizes it, or a phone that disables its camera when a third-party screen is installed, are forms of planned obsolescence enforced through code rather than hardware. The DMCA exemptions don’t solve everything (they need to be renewed periodically, and they don’t require manufacturers to sell parts), but they remove one legal obstacle that kept independent repair shops and DIY fixers in a gray area.
Buy Products Designed to Last
Your most direct power as a consumer is choosing products built for longevity and repairability. This means doing a bit of research before purchasing, but the payoff is years of additional use.
- Check repairability scores. iFixit publishes repairability scores for hundreds of devices, rating how easy they are to open, diagnose, and fix. France requires repairability scores on electronics at the point of sale. A score of 7 or higher generally means you can replace common failure points like batteries and screens without specialized tools.
- Look for modular design. Companies like Fairphone and Framework build products around swappable components. A Framework laptop lets you upgrade the processor, memory, storage, and ports independently, eliminating the need to replace the entire machine when one spec falls behind. Research on modular smartphone design suggests the highest efficiency gains come from making four components independently replaceable: the circuit board, display, back cover, and battery.
- Prioritize software support commitments. Before buying a phone or tablet, check how many years of updates the manufacturer guarantees. Some Android manufacturers now promise seven years. Apple typically supports iPhones for six to seven years. A device with a long update window stays functional and secure far longer than one abandoned after two years.
One trade-off worth knowing: modular devices sometimes sacrifice water and dust resistance. No modular smartphone has yet achieved the IP67 or IP68 waterproofing ratings common in flagship phones, though research shows many conventionally designed phones with those ratings still score between 3 and 7 on repairability. Waterproofing and repairability aren’t mutually exclusive in traditional designs, but fully modular devices haven’t cracked that combination yet.
Maintain What You Own
The simplest way to fight obsolescence is keeping your current products working longer. This sounds obvious, but research on consumer behavior consistently finds that people who feel a stronger attachment to their products are more willing to repair them rather than replace them. That attachment often comes from care and customization over time.
Practical steps vary by product category, but some principles apply broadly. Replace batteries before they damage other components; a swollen phone battery can crack a screen from the inside. Use protective cases and screen protectors on devices where physical damage is the most common reason for replacement. Clean appliances regularly, since lint buildup, clogged filters, and dust accumulation cause most early appliance failures. For computers, replacing a spinning hard drive with a solid-state drive and adding RAM can make a five-year-old machine feel new for a fraction of the replacement cost.
Software maintenance matters too. Uninstalling unused apps, clearing caches, and performing factory resets can restore performance on phones that feel sluggish. Much of what people experience as a phone “slowing down” is software bloat, not hardware degradation.
Use Repair Networks
Independent repair shops and community repair events are a growing counterweight to manufacturer-controlled service. Community repair cafes, volunteer-run events where people bring broken items and fix them with help from experienced tinkerers, have spread to thousands of locations worldwide. Research on these initiatives found they extend product lifetimes not just through the physical repair itself but by building skills and emotional connection to objects through acts of tinkering, sharing, and care.
For electronics, iFixit’s platform provides free step-by-step repair guides for thousands of devices along with the parts and tools needed. YouTube teardown and repair channels cover nearly every common device. The barrier to DIY repair is lower than most people assume: screen replacements, battery swaps, and port repairs on popular phone models typically take 20 to 45 minutes with a guide.
Support Product-as-a-Service Models
One structural shift that realigns manufacturer incentives is the product-as-a-service model, where you pay for the use of a product rather than owning it outright. When the manufacturer retains ownership, they have a direct financial incentive to make products last longer, design components for reuse, and optimize maintenance. A washing machine that breaks after three years is the consumer’s problem under an ownership model. Under a service model, it’s the manufacturer’s cost.
Research from the EU’s Joint Research Centre found that product-as-a-service gives suppliers better control over design, maintenance, end-of-use handling, and component recovery, creating opportunities to extend product lifetimes and improve resource efficiency. Examples include leasing models for office furniture, lighting systems, and commercial appliances. For consumers, this model is still niche, but it’s expanding into categories like phones (where some carriers offer upgrade-and-return programs that feed refurbishment pipelines) and home appliances.
Resist Psychological Obsolescence
Not all obsolescence is engineered into hardware or software. Psychological obsolescence, the feeling that a working product is outdated because a newer version exists, drives a significant share of premature replacements. Phone manufacturers releasing annual models with incremental improvements, fashion brands cycling through seasonal collections, and tech marketing emphasizing what’s “new” all exploit this dynamic.
The counterweight is straightforward: before replacing a working product, identify what specific function it no longer performs. If the answer is “nothing, I just want the new one,” you’re experiencing psychological obsolescence. Research on product attachment suggests that customizing and caring for your belongings strengthens the impulse to keep and repair rather than replace. A phone with a case you chose, a home screen you configured, and data you’ve accumulated feels more like yours than a generic device, and that sense of ownership makes the upgrade cycle easier to resist.
Setting a personal replacement rule can help too. Some people commit to using phones for at least four years, or laptops for at least six, unless a genuine functional need arises. Having a number in mind before the marketing hits makes the decision less emotional.