Treasure in our trash: How taking tech into a repair shop alleviates the e-waste issue

There are few devices Louis Johnson claims he cannot fix.

From an iPod Touch older than most college students to a shiny Google Pixel smartphone with a copious concentration of cameras, Johnson has repaired his fair share of consumer electronics.

At UBreakIFix, a tech repair chain that just opened a branch on Spokane’s North Side, Johnson said the only device he hasn’t been comfortable with fixing was an extremely expensive drone. Other than that, the store manager from Fresno, California, has worked on phones, gaming consoles, laptops, PCs and more.

Whether it is for sentimental reasons, like timeless classics stored on an “ancient” iPod, or for more practical reasons a damaged HDMI port on a pricey XBox, Johnson said he is proud to be the manager of a tech repair shop that will tackle just about anything.

“No matter how old it may be, if you can get the parts, you can do the repair.”

All the electronic trash discarded, whether because of a cracked screen or broken charger port, has treasure inside.

“There’s actually several places in Spokane where you can take things like desktop computers, laptop computers, monitors, televisions, e-readers, tablets, things of that nature and they will recycle the components in them that can be recycled, and it’s completely free,” said Jill Reeves, the waste reduction education and outreach coordinator for the city of Spokane.

Through a program called E-Cycle Washington, people can take their used, unwanted electronics to businesses and recycle the reusable components. TVs, monitors, computers, laptops, tablets (basically everything except smart phones) are accepted through this program. Just in Spokane, there are 14 locations to drop off consumer electronics free of charge. Goodwill, Value Village and the Salvation Army are all businesses currently accepting obsolete, broken or seemingly no-good electronics. Newport, Colville and Pullman also have drop-off locations, while over 100 such sites exist in the Seattle and Tacoma areas. Over 12.84 million pounds of e-waste was recycled because of this program in 2024, according to their website.

While e-waste is growing into one of the largest kinds of waste streams in the world, the numbers do not tell the same story. At least not in Washington.

Christine Haun, the E-Cycle Washington lead for the state’s Department of Ecology, said that only about 0.8% of the 5,790,987 tons of the entire disposed municipal solid waste stream in 2023 consisted of electronics. But that still equates to 46,328 tons of waste.

While E-Cycle Washington does not take smart phones, she said there are plenty of free and accessible “take-back” networks in existence. Haun highlighted Staples, Best Buy, ecoATM and Apple as accepting broken phones.

Reeves is always trying to dream up impactful ways to educate people, particularly young people, on reducing waste. She gives tours of the Waste to Energy Plant in Spokane to students and is often moved by how many leave more cognizant of their waste.

“One of the things that always comes up is the cell phone,” Reeves said. “There’s always the latest and greatest rolling out and we want it. But the upstream pollution associated with just that tiny, little thing that we are all so addicted to is really enormous. We don’t think about that … I think that just talking about that with young people, it really opens their eyes to, ‘Hey, maybe it’s more cool to talk about how long I have had this device and been able to use it without replacing it, and the amount of waste that I have prevented by doing that.’ ”

Upstream pollution refers to the cost to create, while downstream pollution is the cost to dispose of, a product. In an environmental report released for the iPhone 14 Pro, Apple said that 81% of their products’ carbon footprint came from production.

Back at UBreakIFix, Johnson said the most common smart phone repairs are damaged screens and broken batteries. The average cost to repair a phone, Johnson said, is around $79. Although, he admits the price fluctuates depending on whether customers want aftermarket or Original Equipment Manufacturer parts.

“If I did an iPhone right in front of you, it’d take me 15 to 20 minutes (on average to fix),” Johnson said.

Laptop repairs, on the other hand, are often priced between $300 and $400. He said Apple prices their OEM laptop screens at $300. This means customers have to pay the price of the screen and the price of installation, if UBreakIFix has any hope of making a profit.

When it comes to gaming consoles, Johnson said the most common thing that needs fixing is the HDMI port that connects the Xbox or Play Station to the TV. For the Play Station 5, he said the average cost for an HDMI repair is roughly around $150, while it ranges from $200 to $250 for newer Xbox models.

The amount a person will pay to get an electronic fixed, whether for personal or professional reasons, varies greatly. Johnson said he once had a man come in when he worked at his previous store in Fresno who paid $1,500 to get his gaming laptop repaired.

“I got an iPod fourth gen sitting in my shop right now,” Johnson said. “I mean, we haven’t seen one of those in a long time. A lot of people have sentimental things that at some point they don’t care how much it is to get fixed, they just don’t want to lose it.”

The company also offers a program through Asurion, a device insurance company, where customers can pay a little more than $32 a month for coverage. After 31 days of being insured, if a customer’s laptop breaks, they can file a claim, pay a $129 deductible, and get it fixed. The same applies for other devices, which have varying deductible rates.

Upon graduating high school, Jonathan Pegues said he did what many young people do – he got a fairly average fast food job.

“I did it for about a month,” he said. “And I was like, ‘I can’t do this. I need to find something more rewarding,’ and that’s when I ended up in phone repair.”

Now, 13 years and three tech repair chains later, Pegues works as the general manager across three CPR Cell Phone Repair shops. Two in Spokane and one in Moses Lake.

CPR Cell Phone Repair mostly sticks to their namesake, meaning they only really work on cellphones. TVs, drones and other large devices are harder for them to repair, not because they lack the expertise, but because their stores lack the space.

CPR Cell Phone Repair and UBreakIFix are chains with over 700 locations across the United States. And similar to Johnson, Pegues said his favorite part of the job is helping people out with any technological hurdle they encounter, no matter how massive or minute.

Some days, he and his technicians welcome in four to five customers who need help with seemingly trivial tasks, like deleting emails off their laptop. They provide these services for free.

Pegues said he is guardedly optimistic about a new piece of state legislation, House Bill 1483, also known as the Right to Repair. Set to go into effect early next year, this bill mandates that manufacturers must give independent repair providers and consumers access to parts, tools and documentation for electronic devices. The purpose is to make it easier and more affordable for customers and independent repair shops to acquire OEM parts. But Pegues doubts it will have any real effect on franchise owners, like UBreakIFix and CPR Cell Phone Repair, because their partnerships with insurance agencies demand that they carry OEM parts.

“The thing with that, though, is Apple can charge whatever they want,” Pegues said. “So they were charging ridiculous amounts, like $300 for an OEM (computer) screen. Now, with that bill, it goes into effect in January, they’re supposed to charge a fair market price. So we’ll see. Hopefully, the price of those screens comes down because that’ll benefit the customer.”

Pegues’s job requires him to travel from one store to another quite often. But he is also regularly called in to do challenging work that requires a keen attention to detail. Soldering, or bonding two or more metals together by melting a metal alloy, often occurs on a near-microscopic level when it comes to repairing devices.

He had to tinker with a “graveyard of old, broken motherboards” for two years before he felt comfortable attempting to solder a customer’s device. But today, his steady hand and extensive knowledge of tech makes him a confident metalworker.

“A lot of people still don’t know that a phone can be fixed,” Pegues said. “So they’ll go out and they’ll buy the latest and greatest phone … And lately, especially with the iPhones, there’s not a whole lot that’s been upgraded other than the camera. But we’ve gotten into the mindset of ‘we need the newest.’ And so that old phone gets thrown away. But millions or billions of people are doing that, and it really becomes an issue, especially (because) some of that can leach into the ground, cause problems … So if somebody is going to get a new phone I would recommend at least getting that old phone recycled properly.”