I always felt that reuse was finding another distinct purpose for an item after its original purpose had been fulfilled.
For instance, cutting up old milk jugs as scoops or as root-watering funnels would be a re-use, whereas washing out the plastic jug to hold water instead of milk would be a repair.
Scuttling an old naval ship as an artificial reef would be a re-use. Permanently mooring it and opening it for museum tours would be re-use. Stripping it of war materiel and refitting for use as a passenger ship would be re-use. Replacing the obsolete artillery guns with modernized radars and air/missile defense systems and replacing all worn or corroded parts would be a repair.
As such, I would put "repair" before "reduce". If you spend 120% on resources at construction time to also build repair parts, that item might last 50 years under repair instead of being reduced to 90% of normal resources and then reused after only 20 years. I have to assume that when something is reused, that it is simultaneously being replaced in its original purpose, which implies additional use of resources.
Except that repair costs be too much in many cases (ie the replacement part or the labor cost) that it is cheaper to buy a new product for just a little more.
Which ignores the waste disposal externality and alternative uses of the resources used for replacement. The whole point of the slogan is to address the fact that being wasteful has costs that you don't see up front.
Besides that, the manufacturer has an intrinsic incentive to encourage people to throw away something only 1% broken to buy a 100% new replacement. Do you think Apple must glue the batteries inside the unopenable iPhone case, when other manufacturers have user-replaceable battery packs?
> Which ignores the waste disposal externality and alternative uses of the resources used for replacement. The whole point of the slogan is to address the fact that being wasteful has costs that you don't see up front.
It is a rare person who will pay >100% to repair a broken device rather than pay 100% to replace it with a newer, possibly superior product in order to avoid the (more or less abstract in our minds, despite being very real) cost of all the externalities of that decision.
It usually manifests as a person who will pay more up front for something with a lower total cost of ownership.
For example, Person A buys a new phone for $500 every 2 years. Person B buys a new phone for $525, and spends only $75 to replace the battery for a 3rd year. After 6 years, Person A spent $1500, and Person B spent $1200. Person B preferred to buy a phone that was more expensive up front, but cheaper to repair later.
But the other side of the equation is that the company selling to Person A makes more money by diminishing repairability. Person B is furious that Person A even exists, because the producers would always prefer to sell to the person willing to pay a higher price.
