Right-to-repair rules are pushing longevity and reuse deeper into product design, but thin hardware, device locks and weak data are still holding back progress, several electronics designers, recyclers and circular economy specialists said at the 2025 E-Scrap Conference.
Design choices around adhesives, enclosures and software have long-term impacts on reuse and recycling – a reality explored during the conference in Grapevine, Texas. Moderator Liz Chamberlain of iFixit led a discussion with panelists from 3M, Triage Partners, Electronics Value Recovery and consultant Cassie Gruber about how early design decisions show up years later in end-of-life processing.
“Our customers, the OEMs, the brands, they ask for durability, right?” said Olivier Delesalle, global electronics segment leader at 3M. “They want the devices to last longer and for that, you need a stronger bonding solution typically and it typically goes against removability, because it’s strong by definition.” He said 3M is developing debonding tapes that respond to heat or electricity so screens and batteries can be removed without tearing housings or puncturing cells.
Delesalle added that device makers still start with performance, not repair, especially when they chase impact resistance and waterproof seals. In his experience “it’s really performance first, repairability second as a nice to have, typically,” even though regulators and repair advocates are asking for more accessible batteries and displays.
Reuse-focused processor Matthew Young, president of Electronics Value Recovery, said the rush toward thin, light devices already reduces practical durability and complicates repairs.
“You can kind of compare a laptop or a cell phone of 15, 20 years ago and you could practically run it over with a car and it would be fine versus the thinner the devices get,” he said. “One little nick on a screen that small and you’re going to have a crack going through it.”
Gruber, who has worked across e-scrap operators and tier-one manufacturers, argued that companies can balance durability, safety and access if they break designs into modules and tackle the riskiest pieces first.
“If we approach design modularly, then we can minimize some of the risks sometimes and crawl, walk, run,” she said, adding that starting with accessible batteries or critical raw material content can “create successes, instead of trying to achieve the whole oil ocean.”
The discussion then shifted from screws and adhesives to software barriers. Young said his company tracks a fast-growing list of firmware and account locks that can strand working equipment in the scrap stream.
“I believe we’re tracking 27 unique types of locks now,” he said, citing operating system credentials, carrier locks, mobile device management tools and firmware passwords that “have exponentially increased in complexity” over the past five years. When recyclers cannot clear those barriers, he said, devices that might have seen a second life are reduced to parts or commodity material.
Chris Bleess, director of business development at Triage Partners, said such lockouts have long shaped buy-sell trade programs and will not vanish quickly. “It’s always been an issue right in the buy-sell-trade industry,” he said, adding that solutions will require cooperation from OEMs and “education around the corporations that are using the MDM and implementing that on their devices.”
Looking ahead 10 years, panelists said regulatory pressure will make repairability a basic expectation in many markets, rather than a premium feature.
“It is definitely a table stakes in the future,” Delesalle said, warning that brands that fail to comply with right-to-repair rules in the US and Europe could be forced out of key markets. “It’s not a wish list anymore, it’s a requirement.”
Chamberlain closed the discussion by linking her policy work at iFixit with what happens on the ground when devices reach recyclers and refurbishers. “I do a lot of arguing for repair laws that affect OEMs and affect things upstream and downstream,” she said, adding that it is “super helpful” to hear directly how those decisions play out in the reuse and recycling stream.
