The concept of repairability

It's no longer news that the systemic ecological crisis we are currently experiencing is forcing us to review our lifestyles and consumption patterns. On a planet that is constantly overshooting its limits (this is the principle of planetary limits), the time has come to save resources and put a stop to the great waste... In this context, one concept is set to become central to our material and daily lives: repairability.

This practice, as you will have understood, is not really a contemporary invention... It is rather the comeback of what was, a few decades ago, a question of pure common sense: when you break something, hey well, you fix it! An obvious fact that our modern societies have forgotten, in favor of new and ugly reflexes: broken object = thrown away object and bought new. A logic that has become untenable today, and which opens the way to a return to the good old pragmatism of the past, and to the care given to objects. As for the definition, the notion of repairability is not very mysterious. A repairable object is an object whose life span can be extended by replacing or repairing one or more parts.

It is opposed to another notion, much commented and pointed out for some time: programmed obsolescence, which describes a way of conceiving products with a limited lifespan, forcing consumers to buy them again regularly.

With repairability, on the other hand, we are following a virtuous and sober logic, that of the circular economy. Or how to get out of the linear pattern of produce > consume > throw away to come back to dynamics that are economical in resources and raw materials: produce > use > repair (or recycle) > reuse.

"The attention paid to reparability is not new at DECATHLON," says Julie Soulignac, sustainable development project manager for repairability. Some pioneering sports have been working on these issues for a long time, such as the Itiwit brand for paddle sports, stand-up paddle and kayak. Similarly, the development of eco-design has boosted this new requirement. Repairability is indeed one of the criteria of ecodesign. The rule is that a product is considered repairable if at least 80% of the breakages and failures identified on it can be repaired.

It remains to generalize the approach. To do this, DECATHLON was inspired by the index developed by ADEME (the Agency for the Environment and Energy Management in France) and created its own internal reference system. "We have taken the first four criteria (dismantlability, availability of parts, price, documentation) to build an evaluation system, which we have been testing for the past two years on our products." It is, as one can imagine, a long process.

"The aim is to gradually systematize this new evaluation method, and then to draw up what we call the 'Decathlon Conception Rules' (DCR), the rules that govern the design of all our products. In the long term, we hope to generalize the good design practices to make our products as easily repairable as possible. It's a big job of implementation, which necessarily takes a little time!
To achieve this, the job of "repairability leader" is being developed. Their missions? Analyze the offer, organize the availability of spare parts, support the creation of repair tutorials for
DECATHLON's support site, and putting the work of the various teams involved to music.