Waste not that broken vacuum. Berlin will pay you to repair your stuff.

A sad army of broken electronics sits in my shoulder bag.

It’s a rainy fall weekday in Berlin, and I live in a city that has decided to pay people to repair stuff to reduce waste.

I mentally survey what I lug carefully across the wet cobblestones of Metzer Strasse. The plates on the flat iron that press frizz out of my hair no longer lie flat; the motor on my black household fan, which shuts off after a few minutes; the iPhone whose battery depletes itself in an instant.

Berlin’s reparaturbonus won’t be a windfall – the most it pays is about $200 per device – but I may divert a few things from the electronics graveyard.

The most valuable thing in the bag is my husband’s palm-size Marantz audio recorder. It’s both expensive and practically useless: It reads data cards only when they are held in place by an insistent finger – unfortunate for a busy broadcast journalist.

“I don’t want anyone messing with it. It’s important for my work,” my husband had said that morning, eyeing my lumpy sack of electronics, to which I’d hoped to add his out-of-production jewel. “It still works sometimes.”

I coaxed it away from him, and saw that he’d jury-rigged a rubber-band contraption to hold the data card door closed.

“Trust me,” I said, with a smirk. “Trust Berlin.”

The Berlin city government has budgeted $1.3 million to try out its version of a program this year that has worked in other German cities as well as in Austria. To anyone who fills out qualifying paperwork, it will pay back half of repair costs between $80 and $400 to fix any item on an eclectic, six-page list that includes powered toothbrushes, bread makers, table saws, and smartwatches.

The goal is to incentivize people to avoid waste and use things longer. “Reparaturbonus should be copied everywhere,” says Stefan Neitzel, owner of Berlin bike services shop Fahrradstation, “because it gives a small incentive for consumers, and for repair places, and it also might incentivize the manufacturing industry to build items that are reparable.”

The program sounds great in theory, but given my experience with Berlin – a city full of good intentions – I’m guessing it’ll be difficult to get things fixed in a decentralized repair economy and then compel a creaking German bureaucracy to reimburse me.

Repairs – potentially a boom business

Matthias Urban confirms one of my suspicions.

I’d noticed his repair shop on walks in my neighborhood. I shake off my umbrella, and step over the threshold into a brightly lit shop with warm brown laminate flooring lined with refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. Mr. Urban glances at my stuff.  

“The fan – I’ll have a look at that,” he says, dismissing the other things.  

Lenora Chu

Matthias Urban says calls to his Berlin repair shop have increased 50% since the city launched its "reparaturbonus" program to incentivize people to fix – rather than trash – their broken electronics.

Calls to Mr. Urban’s shop have increased 50% since Berlin announced the program in September. “People sometimes bring in parts they’ve sourced themselves,” he says, making me feel like a bad customer. “They’re now considering repairs rather than buying new things,” he says, nodding with satisfaction.

“The fan – leave it here. I’ll call you in a week.”

One device down, three to go. Mr. Neitzel of Fahrradstation is acting as a bit of a repair consultant, and he tells me that success will boil down to whether the part can be sourced.

“The repair industry is underdeveloped,” he says. “There’s huge demand for repair services, but success starts with good workers and ends with the whole supply chain.”

“I’ll call you in a week”

I have high hopes for my next stop, Thauer Technology, a store with a bright blue awning.

Daniel Thauer is an information technology specialist born to a certified television master craftsman, and father-and-son expertise is housed under one roof. A bear of a man with brown-rimmed glasses, Mr. Thauer is surrounded by cardboard boxes and electronic devices, in various stages of function. I weave my way past a washer-dryer combo to the front desk. Mr. Thauer peers down at my broken stuff. 

He motions at the Marantz, which I pass through a slot in the pandemic-era Plexiglas shield. He fiddles with the data door.  

“People bring in the craziest things,” he tells me, “such as a power strip, which is nonsense because a new one costs only 5 to 10 euros. Strange. Not worth repairing. Neither is a hot water kettle with a broken casing.”

Well-known brands are going to be the best bet, because replacement parts are easy to procure. For everything else, it’s a 50-50 chance, says Mr. Thauer. “Maybe we can get a new casing for this. Maybe we can’t,” he says after dialing Marantz and getting no answer. “I’ll call you in a week.”

Still waiting

Back at home I put the flat iron in a cardboard box and stash it under the bathroom sink. I make a mental note to buy a new iPhone.

A week later, Mr. Urban calls: “Come pick up the fan.” I’d bought it in Asia, where I lived before moving to Europe, and he can’t get a replacement part for the motor.

It has now been two weeks, and my husband has stopped asking about his audio recorder; Mr. Thauer still hasn’t heard from Marantz.

“I think I’ll hear next week,” he says.

Berlin will decide at the end of this year whether to renew the program. It has been wildly successful in the economically challenged state of Thuringia in central Germany: Its first round in 2021 pulled in more than 6,000 applications and doled out $422,000. There, the program is in its fourth year.

I haven’t picked up my black fan from Mr. Urban; I like the idea of it hanging in the storage room with other abandoned appliances. 

Reparaturbonus hasn’t worked for me – yet. But there’s satisfaction in having tried.