The average smartphone contains enough rare earth metals to buy a decent lunch, but here's the kicker: we throw away over 5 billion phones a year, and most of that isn't recycled because the batteries are glued in. You literally cannot get to them without destroying the device. That's not engineering. That's a design choice meant to force you into buying a new $1,000 phone every two years. I get the counterargument that repairs are complicated and manufacturers worry about safety or quality. Fair enough. But you can make a phone repairable without making it fragile. Fairphone's been doing it for years, and their customers aren't blowing themselves up. If a tiny Dutch company can manage it, Apple and Samsung can too. Making repairability a legal requirement isn't about banning innovation. It's about stopping planned obsolescence from being the business model. It's about treating e-waste like the environmental crisis it is, not a marketing strategy.

Look at what happened in France when they introduced that repairability index a few years back. Suddenly manufacturers started releasing repair manuals and selling spare parts, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because the law made it visible. That's the power of regulation. And I'll admit, my opponent has a point that forcing repairability might mean slightly thicker phones or a bit more effort in design. But we're not asking for a phone you can take apart with a butter knife. We're asking for the same basic standard we have for cars, where you can pop the hood and swap a battery without voiding a warranty. The real issue is that manufacturers currently profit from making repairs impossible. That isn't a design tradeoff, it's a business model. A legal requirement just shifts the incentive back toward building something that lasts. And that helps everyone, especially the planet.

We both agree phones should be safe and work well. But the real question is who gets to decide what happens after you buy it. Right now, manufacturers act like you're just renting the device until they decide it's obsolete. I get that phones are complex, and not everyone wants to crack theirs open. That's fine. But a repairability law doesn't force you to repair anything. It just makes it possible. It's like seatbelt laws—you don't have to buckle up, but the option is there because it protects everyone. Here's the thing people miss: this isn't just about individual tinkerers. It's about the millions of phones that end up in landfills because a glued-in battery can't be swapped. That's e-waste we all pay for. We already expect cars to have replaceable parts. Phones aren't magic, they're just designed to be disposable. A law shifts that incentive without killing innovation. It's the least we can do.