Right to Repair bill signed!

Today, Governor Jared Polis signed HB 24-1121 into law, giving Colorado consumers the guaranteed legal right to repair their own electronic equipment.

Sponsored by Colorado Representatives Brianna Titone and Steven Woodrow, and Senators Jeff Bridges and Nick Hinrichsen, and supported by PIRG – the Public Interest Research Group and Repair.org, this law addresses the obstacles manufacturers have put in the way of consumers fixing their own electronics. Up until now, consumers have had to take electronics to authorized repair shops or – often more simply – discarding the old equipment to purchase a new one.

Every year, Americans produce seven million tons of electronic waste. All of us learned in school the “Three Rs” of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, and “Repair” is the missing key that needs to be after “Reuse”. They are in that order deliberately: recycling is vitally important, but it uses less energy to keep things working than to collect the commodities and turn them into something new.

Blue Star has been an avid supporter of this law since it first came up for discussion, with Refurbishment Manager Tom Moloney having been in the trenches since before COVID.

This is the third Right-to-Repair law sponsored by Representative Titone, following laws guaranteeing that right for agricultural equipment and powered wheelchairs.