I’ve been speaking to a lot of people about their toasters. One common thread has become clear: everyone hates the idea of throwing away broken appliances, but no one feels confident enough to try to repair them.

Which got me interested in what was out there to support people in repairing their stuff. To my delight, I discovered an extensive network of volunteer-run repair cafes. Members of the public bring in their broken household items, volunteers try to fix them for free, and teach the owner in the process. And this isn’t a niche thing: there are over 3,000 (three thousand!) repair cafes worldwide, with over 650 in the UK alone. Earlier this year there was even a repair cafe in the Houses of Parliament. Who better than these fixers to advise on how to extend the lifespan of toasters?

I reached out to a few local organisers, and received enthusiastic responses. Alex Horn from West Central London Fixers was happy to talk. Before we talked toasters, I had to ask: what is the weirdest thing you’ve fixed? With the stony professionalism of a surgeon Alex replied “We had someone bring in a sex toy. A wire just needed re-soldering, so it was easy to fix.”

Broken toasters are a less sexy but more common occurrence. “We see a lot of toasters. The electromagnet stops working so the lever won’t stay down. That or the heating element breaks, which is often not possible to replace.” But there’s a bigger challenge upstream of fixing it. “They’re a nightmare to get into. Half your time is spent opening up the toaster without breaking the plastic case.”

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Chris Setz from Haringey Fixers has been fixing for a long time. “I was a hippie in the seventies, living in squats. I found a Reader’s Digest about repairing things and I just taught myself from there.” His experience with toasters mirrors Alex’s. “It’s obvious that toasters are not designed with repair in mind. It can easily take all the time you have just trying to get the thing open. The plastic cases are glued on, or use inaccessible screws.” What would help? “Making it modular, making it easy to get into.” Although in many cases Chris manages to circumvent this challenge. “Crumbs get stuck in the lift mechanism. So the first thing you should do with a broken toaster is turn it upside down and give it a good bang.”

It’s clear from speaking with both Chris and Alex that their love of fixing isn’t just about rejuvenating appliances. “There’s a great satisfaction in repairing things, and there’s a social angle in how it brings together the community. It’s great for wellbeing.” explains Alex. Each repair cafe connects diverse members of the local community who wouldn’t otherwise meet, empowers people with useful skills and knowledge, and gives those teaching them the satisfaction of providing a valuable social good.

This is familiar to Martine Postma, the former journalist who created the first ever Repair Cafe in 2009 in Amsterdam. “We now have repair cafes in places as far flung as Hawaii, Hong Kong and Iceland. I'm always amazed at how similar they feel all over the world. The atmosphere is always a nice positive chaos, with people using their broken products as conversation starters." Is she surprised by how repair cafes have spread? "We're celebrating our 15th anniversary this year. It still amazes me how big it's grown. It's a signal that people are sick of throwaway culture.”

She’s supportive of our mission to create a 100 year toaster. "I think it's a great idea. We should have products that are built to last. But it will be a challenge to make the economics work. People expect cheap products, but the only solution is for products to be more expensive. It makes them worthwhile to repair, stimulates consumers to take better care of them. When you buy a kettle for €10 you don't feel like you have something of value in your hands, something that’s worth caring for.”

One of the most common reasons I hear people give for not fixing their own appliances is concern about safety. How does she view the risk of people repairing their own mains-powered items? "Manufacturers tend to talk up the dangers, and say they won't make things repairable for safety reasons. That's nonsense! If it's about safety they should provide us with the information and tools to do it safely. When you use your common sense you can solve most problems, most things will be okay. It's not possible for the government or for manufacturers to take away all the risks. If you take away all risks you can't live!”

Another of the organisations central to the repair movement is the Restart Project. Founded in 2012, it has been instrumental in lobbying for “right to repair” legislation in the UK and across Europe. I asked Ugo Vallauri, one of the founders, his advice on our project.

“A decade ago, when we started, what we were saying was pioneering. Now I’m pleased to see repairability becoming more mainstream - brands like Patagonia offering repair services in store. So that gives me hope. But a toaster will be an interesting challenge, given the price point. They tend to be throwaway nowadays - from the perspective of their manufacturers, at least! We have made progress on legislation, such as forcing manufacturers to provide spare parts for their products, but that can only go so far. Repairability alone is meaningless if we don’t reduce the number of items that are made, and consumption of resources as a result. So the idea of trying to tackle this with a different mindset is exciting.”

These conversations make it clear that we need to design repairability into our toaster from the ground up. Even just making it easy to get into and reassemble will be a positive leap forward. But more than this, the people I’ve spoken to have painted a hopeful vision of the future. That, beyond just reducing appliance waste, we can return to a world where we’re all more self-sufficient, more frugal, and more connected to the objects and people around us. That, one day, we can all be fixers again. That’s a future I would love to be part of.

One of the first things we wanted to understand in our endeavour to create a 100 year toaster is how existing toasters are made. So we bought a bunch of broken toasters from eBay, shelled out for this £8.99 beauty from Curry’s, brought in a few of the team’s own toasters, and got to work stripping them down.

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The first thing that’s apparent is that the average toaster is a tough nut to crack. Plastic hooks, twisted sheet metal feet, and obscure screw heads make getting their cases off a lengthy and frustrating challenge. Is this a sinister anti-fixer conspiracy by Big Toast? Probably not. It feels to us like something more banal: in the obsessive pursuit of cost efficiencies at scale, repairability has just fallen by the wayside.

When you do finally get inside, what’s striking is that the guts of most toasters are fundamentally identical. They all feature a case made of sheet metal, a jangly wire cage within each slot, nichrome wire heating elements, and a solenoid-based lift mechanism. Whether you’ve splashed out £200 for a SMEG or picked up an own-brand toaster for less than a tenner, the majority employ the same core functional design and manufacturing processes. Many are probably made by the same factories. The only discernible difference on the internals is the quality of materials used, such as thicker sheet metal in “premium” branded toasters.

Irrespective of price, the repair-resistant design choices continue on the inside. Folded metal tabs, soldered connections, hard-to-reach screws, and inaccessible integrated electronics. So when you shell out for a high-end toaster, that extra money is in most cases just buying you a fancier casing (such as SMEG’s heavy die-cast outer shell) and a posher brand. At core, it’ll still be designed to be disposable, and suffer from the same points of failure as much cheaper options. This matches what a team from Ohio State University found in collaboration with Wirecutter in their tear-down of a range of toasters. Their conclusion was that “modern toasters are the kitchen equivalent of printers—everything in the category is pretty crappy”.

One notable exception is the high-end Dualit “Classic” range. Handmade in the UK and designed with repairability in mind, they’re industrial-looking beasts that feature pared down electronics, mechanical timer and a simple lift mechanism. Still not the easiest to take apart, but they do feature replaceable heating elements, thanks to their (cue infomercial voice) patented ProHeat® technology. But even Dualit has not been able to resist making McToasters: their mid- and low-end toasters are plastic-heavy, and have the same repair-resistant construction as all the others we looked at.

A final unnerving observation from our tear-downs: whatever the toaster, if it’s been in use for any length of time, it’s probably filthy on the inside. James shook a second-hand Kenwood and a stream of what looked like whole charred cranberries fell out. The insides of his own Dualit Classic were caked in ancient seeds. Chances are that even with a crumb tray, your toaster is hiding a lot of nasty old bits of food. So that’s at least one reason not to open up your toaster - if you don’t know it’s dirty, maybe you don’t have to clean it…? 🤷

So I was buzzing when I first spoke with Dan Barnes about the industrial design studio he founded, Manufactured Design. I was struck by their focus on positive impact and their holistic approach to design challenges. Founded only 4 years ago, their small team has already won leading industry awards including Red Dot, IF and D&AD for their work, ranging from durable city bikes for Beryl to a circular packaging system for Meadow. All to say, it seemed like a perfect fit.

Dan’s interest in making things started at a young age. He grew up (like me) in the north of England, with a dad who worked in manufacturing and loved to repair cars. He started tinkering as a kid and “just kept going”. In the 20 odd years since, he’s been a designer for organisations ranging from startups to large corporations, including Glen Dimplex, the owners of mainstream appliance brand Morphy Richards. What was it like inside “Big Toast”? “It gave me real insight into how little is up for grabs design-wise at these titans. The price points they operate at, with volume retailers calling the shots, mean new products are a reskin job every time. There’s no real scope for innovation in design or technology.”

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These experiences have shaped his approach with Manufactured Design. They start by questioning the very basis of the proposed product. “We want to make sure we’re making the right thing - and whether that thing should exist at all”. Once convinced of the need, they take a holistic approach to finding a solution. “The product itself is just one part of a system, across the whole of its lifetime. So it’s important to cover all bases, from upstream supply chain to downstream lifecycle management. Take Beryl - journeys totaling almost 5 million kilometres have been made on Beryl bikes. That’s only possible by designing in not just durability but serviceability, to keep them in continual operation”.

One way they achieve this is by including manufacturing considerations in early design thinking. They have substantial expertise in UK manufacturing, which imposes a particular set of constraints. “Compared to Asia, the scope of manufacturing in the UK is very narrow. So to make products locally you need to design within what’s possible here. For example, when redesigning the Beryl bike docking station we chose an extruded form. This was a great design solution - a single, solid, resilient piece of material - but also feasible for UK factories to make at the necessary scale and cost.” 

Once it had survived Dan’s customary initial scepticism, we both became excited by the potential of partnering on the 100 year toaster project. “It’s a project that challenges the linearity of the development process, the idea that R&D is just up front. We have to move away from that model of design, release, move on, and create a more sustainable contract with the customer. And the impact can be huge. There’s a toaster in almost every household, but that’s just the start - our hope is that we can take the approach we develop and apply to other appliances”. Safe to say I can’t wait to work with Dan, and his team of James and Joe, who bring expertise from roles with Dyson, Arrival, Nolii and Black & Blum.

Everyone on the project is unified by a desire to radically reduce home appliance waste, but for Dan it also has a personal dimension: penance for his previous product design sins. “I made a product years ago that will haunt me for the rest of my days - the “Daisy Fan Heater”. The client wanted to take one of their existing heaters, make it pink, and sell it to girls. It went on to become possibly the biggest selling product in my career at that point - 1 million units and counting - a large proportion of which I fear are now in landfill. So maybe the toaster project is also my opportunity for redemption”. For you and us all, Dan!

Last month, without warning, our otherwise reliable washing machine refused to drain - a heart-stopping event when battling the laundry generated by a 4 month old baby. Our landlord promptly sent a repair person, and they determined that, although the machine was mechanically sound, the electronics had failed. But instead of paying to fix it, our landlord decided on the much cheaper option of just binning it and buying us a whole new washing machine.

This situation is now the norm. Every year we dump almost a million tonnes of home appliance waste in the UK alone. With an average lifespan of under a decade, it’s now usually cheaper to throw a broken appliance away and buy a new one than repair it. And with kitchen trends now refreshing every year, we have more incentive than ever to switch out appliances that don’t fit the design scheme. All to say: home appliances have become disposable.

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This strikes me as totally insane. But it wasn’t always like this. In the mid-twentieth century appliances were made to last. They were designed to be repaired, using higher quality components and techniques that promote longevity. As a result Maytag washing machines, Kitchenaid mixers, or Sunbeam toasters were often handed down to the next generation, with some even working to this day. Where did we lose our way?

The problem lies, as it often does, in profit maximisation. Like all public companies, the handful of manufacturers that dominate the home appliance market prioritise shareholder value above all else, through exponential profit growth. They can achieve this in two ways: by reducing costs or increasing revenues. So, year by year, bit by bit, cheaper materials and processes are used to reduce unit costs at ever increasing scale. For example, the metal panels of washing machines used to be dipped in paint, but spray painting is marginally cheaper, so it has become the norm. But this often misses inner seams, and as a result the panels rust much more quickly. Cheaper, lower quality components mean that motors now give out sooner, heating elements break more often, and electronics frequently fail. This downward pressure on costs is further compounded by a race to the bottom on retail price. As a result appliance lifespans have shortened an estimated 20-30% over the past decade alone.

You’d think this would be bad for business. But shorter lifespans mean increased replacement rates, so the manufacturers actually win twice - increased sales volumes as well as lower unit costs. They have no incentive to design more easily repairable products, especially if it costs more to do so. This process of “enshittification” benefits the manufacturer’s bottom line but harms everyone else: it results in more waste for the planet, and worse products for the purchaser.

This is clearly a grotesque and unacceptable state of affairs. Which begged the question: could we reverse this trend? To do so I believe we need to harness the power of the open market rather than rail against it. Could we outcompete the incumbents by creating appliances that deliver value over a really long period of time - appliances that are built to be repaired, and handed down across multiple generations?

So I’m convening a group of us to try, starting with the humble toaster. Toasters are near universal (90% of UK households have one), they’re replaced frequently (1 in 10 households replace their toaster each year) and are too difficult and expensive relative to their value for most people to repair. Plus, despite the average toaster today offering “bagel mode” and an array of other ancillary features, the core job of toasting bread is mechanically quite simple.

Our goal is to create a toaster that toasts bread exceptionally well, for a very long time. So long, in fact, that the grandchildren of the purchaser will still be making their breakfast with it, 100 years later. What you might call “planned persistence”, rather than planned obsolescence. The initial production runs are likely to be small and therefore the products expensive, but we will only be successful when we have produced a toaster that the majority of people can afford. And of course, our toaster’s total environmental impact needs to be significantly lower than the alternatives.

The idea is that, once we’ve cracked it with a toaster, we can apply the same principles to other home appliances.  But first things first: let’s start with a nice slice of toast or two. I’ll be posting regular updates, to share what we learn - both good and bad. Subscribe to follow along!