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Comment by imoverclocked | Hacker News Reader

I just replaced an electric stove top unit because the old one had a burner that wouldn’t turn off. I still haven’t figured out what to do with the old unit; a local e-waste recycling group doesn’t want it, I don’t know anyone that wants a partially functioning stovetop, I don’t want to fix it myself… but I guess I can pay to bring it to the local landfill.

Anyone claiming that “right to repair” fixes any of this is missing the part where people don’t want to spend their lives repairing everything they have. Also, the new stovetop is far more energy efficient than the old one with is yet another balancing aspect of replacing old tech.

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Right to repair just means for those that do want to repair it, they can without any undue burden.

If you don't want to repair it, nobody is forcing you to! Just throw it away like you would have done anyways.

The point of right to repair is that there is a non-zero amount of people who want to repair stuff and it shouldn't cost the people who don't anything extra... It's a "right" not an "obligation"...

> I still haven’t figured out what to do with the old unit

I don't have a success percentage to offer you, but I've seen quite a lot of that kind of thing in the "free" section of Craigslist. There are all kinds of folks who grab that stuff for parts, for the challenge, or who knows

I've also seen mixed opinions about the best way to use that section: one audience thinks "put it on the curb, announce the fact you did so, the end" and the other audience is against that because it could cause multiple people to drive to what could be an empty curb by the time they get there. I'd say go with whichever causes you the least emotional stress: fielding bazillions of Craigslist emails or running the risk of inadvertent climate change contributions

I don't want to fix it myself either, and I don't see how a repair industry could exist without the right to repair.

> I don’t know anyone that wants a partially functioning stovetop

Maybe some repair shop wants to buy it cheap, to repair, and to sell for profit? Or not buy, but to repair it to you for a fraction of the price of a new stove top?

> Also, the new stovetop is far more energy efficient than the old one with is yet another balancing aspect of replacing old tech.

This is the killer. If new things are better then it may be not economically viable to repair.

Put it up on craigslist (or whatever is popular in your area) for free and label it "as-is, needs repair". Odds are decent that someone will take it off your hands with the intention of fixing it and getting a free stove top.

Good on you for trying to contact local e-waste! I feel most people (incl my uncle) just toss and forget

you just admitted that you're the problem. "new stovetop is far more energy efficient than the old one" how so? does it magically produce more heat from nothing?

Inductive heating can be more efficient than resistive heating because less energy is lost to the environment.

That's a nonsensical thing to say. An electric cooktop using heated rings is indisputably less efficient than an induction cooktop. It simply doesn't get all of its energy into the cookware.

What's the parent commenter supposed to do? Live without a stovetop because the old one can't be fixed?

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