In Austria, the Government Pays to Repair Your Stuff
"Taking the “right to repair” one step further, a Viennese repair bonus is going national — and keeping thousands of items out of the junkyard
..Now a national repair bonus, which will kick off this April, will adopt the same approach focusing on E-waste, which is the fastest growing waste stream in the developed world. 83,000 tons of it land in Austrian landfills every year, of which only around 17 percent is recycled. The national repair bonus will subsidize 50 percent of repair costs for electronic and electrical equipment, capped at €200 per repair.
..The repair bonus model is gaining in popularity as a bridging measure. Both the German state of Thüringen and the city of Portland followed Vienna’s example with their own schemes in the spring of 2021. Eisenriegler, who has spent the better part of 30 years lobbying for sustainable solutions in Brussels, already sees the first signs of an EU-wide repair bonus. It is being discussed in connection with eco-social tax reforms, but he points out that the desired systemic change would make the repair bonus obsolete: “If we have a tax reform where labor is taxed less while resources become more expensive, we won’t be needing this crutch anymore.” "
