Electricals: consumers would rather dump than repair

It seems the environment’s loss is the housewares retailer’s gain, as consumers would rather buy new electricals than make the effort to fix old ones.

Despite increasing pressure to live a greener existence, reduce our carbon footprints and minimise the amount of waste going to landfill it seems that a massive 86% of consumers would discard broken electrical items without trying to repair them.

Shockingly, of the 4,000 adults surveyed in the Legal & General poll, 18% said they would replace a kettle because it was coated in limescale – that’s 720 new kettles.

A shameful 12% would replace an item just because the fuse had blown! So if we guesstimate that the average household has six small electricals in their kitchen (kettle, toaster, iron, two food prep appliances and one impulse purchase or present) that’s a whopping 2,280 new electrical items bought per 4,000 consumers, just because the fuse needed replacing!