Repair Lowers Carbon Emissions: exploring the impact of consumption emissions

For most types of products we see at community repair events, most of their global warming impact has occurred before they were used for the first time. The carbon emissions from production, that come embodied in imported products, are often called “consumption emissions”. By extending the lives of these products, we lower our consumption emissions over time.

We estimate that volunteers fixing at over 2,000 community events prevented 373 tonnes of carbon emissions by delaying the purchase of new products. This is why the Right to Repair is so important and urgent. Scaled globally, the impact of repairing our things and minimising our consumption will play a major part in mitigating the effects of the climate crisis in years to come.

The theme of International Repair Day 2021 is “Repair Lowers Carbon Emissions.” The theme resonates in the year of COP26 and also, following the alarming IPCC report on climate that was recently released.

In the lead up to the day, we are hosting a webinar to explore carbon emissions - how and when they are produced and how we can minimise them. We will also focus on understanding national level emissions, but not just the emissions that happen in the UK or in Europe. In international negotiations, our consumption emissions are counted on other countries’ balance sheets. We’ll look at consumption emissions at scale, and explore the role of Right to Repair and other measures for longer-lasting products in reducing our emissions.

Join us for a short presentation and a Q&A on the topic, hosted by Chloé Mikolajczak from Right to Repair Europe and Ugo Vallauri from The Restart Project, with our guest Professor of Energy and Climate Policy, John Barrett from The Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds. Barratt is also a member of the Academic Panel for Climate Assembly UK, we are very pleased to have him share his expertise with us for this event. There will be time to answer questions from the audience too.

We previously held part 1 of this series on the topic of the hidden carbon impact of making our electronics. You can watch it here: therestartproject.org/consumption/hidden-impact-devices/

**When: **8th October **12pm BST / 1pm CEST **(duration: 1 hour)

**Where: **Online (we will send you a Zoom link after you register for a ticket)

****Note: this webinar will be recorded***