For many years now this site has promoted the idea of a reduction in taxation and specifically of VAT on repairs and spare parts in order to encourage more repair rather than replacement as, simply put, that’s a far more environmentally friendly option.
Now it seems that the Swedes may well take the lead and beat the UK to the punch in actually doing something about this in a bid to help prevent needless waste.
All we can say is, go Sweden, well done if you get this passed!
In the proposals for its forthcoming budget, the Social Democrat and Green parties plan to bring in a new tax break for people who carry out more expensive repairs to fridges, dishwashers and washing machines.
At the same time, the government plans to make buying new white goods and computers more expensive, by slapping on an additional “chemical tax” to cover the cost to the environment of substances which are hard to recycle.
We’re going to go right ahead and say now that, UK government would be lobbied senseless for that not to happen by the global corporations that flog these products as they would not like that. At all.
Per Bolund the Swedish minister for finance markets and consumption said; “This issue was a really low priority under the last government,” he continued; “But if we want to solve the problems of sustainability and the environment we have to work on consumption.”
As well as encouraging people with lower prices to repair the stuff they already have, the Swedish government also plans a publicity drive to encourage people to repair their things more often, with 43 million Swedish Kronor allocated for promoting the new plan.
“One area we are really looking at is so-called ‘nudging’, Boland said. “That means, through various methods, making it easier for people to do the right thing.”
“From my point of view, it’s not necessarily about consuming less, but more looking at what we consume and how.”
The government estimates that the tax breaks for repairing white goods will cost 190m Swedish kronor a year, while the reduction in VAT for reparations of cycles, clothes and shoes would come to 270m kronor a year.
Meanwhile the new chemicals tax is expected to raise about two billion kronor a year so on balance it’s a net win for the Swedish government coffers. And, the big win being that waste is reduced.
As we said, we have been pushing along with the WTA for a similar scheme to be adopted here in the UK for many years as it makes total sense to encourage people to repair the products they have rather than throwing them away needlessly. A trend that sadly seems to be getting increasingly greater as time goes by with more and more appliances going to the tip every year.
Of course this is not helped by the introduction of irreparable sealed units , high spare part prices and the respective practices on technical and spare part information but, unless governments step in and do something to halt that and the waste, it will never change.
