EcoIron explores Jan Chipchase's fascinating post on Informal Repair Cultures. If you're anything like me, the minute something goes wrong with your PC, laptop, cell phone, TV, iPod or [insert your favorite gadget here], you go out and buy a new one. Partly because it doesn't make financial sense to repair (cheaper to buy new) and because new stuff is just plain cooler.

But that's not how it works in some developing areas

For consumers the informal repair culture is largely convenient, efficient, fast and cheap, reducing the total cost of ownership for people for whom a small drop in price may make the difference between having or not having a phone. The culture of repair also increases the lifetime of products lowering their environmental impact (though this could be offset by other factors such as inefficiency of using old batteries).

What can our society learn from them? Maybe our collective tech snobbery will someday give way to an attitude that doesn't consider "refurbished" a dirty word. Now, about that planned obsolescence... <-- Warning, contentious Wikipedia link.