Microsoft and the scale of e-waste

In 2018, October 14th was designated as International E-Waste Day by the WEEE Forum to raise awareness about the staggering volumes of discarded electronics and the critical raw materials they contain. In 2025, E-Waste Day happened to coincide with the end of Microsoft’s extended support for its operating system Windows 10. Although Windows 10 had reached its 10-year lifecycle, some estimates suggest that over 400 million devices still run Windows 10 because they cannot be upgraded to Windows 11 due to hardware incompatibility. These devices are locked out of further updates, hence rendered obsolete or at best significantly less secure. It is projected that, were these devices to be discarded as a consequence, the premature obsolescence could amount to as much as 700 million kg of additional e-waste. 

This coincidence is more than symbolic; it exposes a structural tension. While public policy calls for waste prevention and longer product lifespans, software governance by market actors increasingly determines when hardware becomes obsolete. As Ugo Vallauri of The Restart Project notes, this is “a perfect example of premature and planned obsolescence, possibly the largest example to date”. Devices that function perfectly are invalidated not by hardware failure but by corporate decisions. Under the banners of “security” and “innovation”, users are nudged to buy new devices (“Ready for a new PC?”), or otherwise remain on insecure systems. The analysis of this case may help us contextualise where we are in terms of progress in tackling e-waste and obsolescence.

The echo of a legal response 

Hadn’t EU consumer law and market regulation already, and also quite recently, addressed premature obsolescence? 

On paper, yes.

Software has a strong impact on hardware - software updates can extend the functionality and lifespan of hardware, though often the opposite happens. For this reason, in February 2024, the Directive on empowering consumers for the green transition stated that amendments to the UCPD should also address commercial policies involving deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited lifespan so that it prematurely becomes obsolete or non-functional (Recital 16). In June 2024, the EU also approved the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation requiring manufacturers to design more durable and repairable products and prevent devices from becoming obsolete early due to design choices, including by prematurely discontinuing software updates (Art. 5, para. 2). 

Yet gaps remain. Ecodesign rules specify a minimum update duration only for smartphones and tablets, not for laptops and other devices. Even where such a minimum exists (five years after a model is last sold), this may be insufficient. Meanwhile, the Digital Content Directive requires suppliers to provide (security) updates for the period of time “that the consumer may reasonably expect” (Art. 8, para. 2, lett. b), a formulation both vague and difficult to enforce.

Collective action as democratic experimentation

The end of Windows 10 support triggered the mobilisation of digital rights and right-to-repair advocates. These groups voiced concerns not only to Microsoft but also to public institutions, warning that the decision risked generating unnecessary e-waste as even relatively new laptops cannot meet certain Windows 11 requirements. At the 2025 Fixfest in London, repair volunteers, activists, and repair professionals staged a flashmob demanding long-term software updates. Weeks later, campaigners from the Right to Repair EU coalition gathered in Brussels to protest Microsoft’s practices, while the French organisation HOP (Halte à l’obsolescence programmée) collected over 50,000 signatures for its “Non à la taxe Windows!” petition.

The experimentation has also been more hands-on. Community-led repair initiatives, such as repair cafés, are supporting the migration of computers to open source operating systems such as Linux and office tools like LibreOffice. Here, repair might not only be a technical fix, but also a way of solving a bigger problem, a collective act of refusal of dependence on corporate update regimes. Yet they also face limits: migrating hundreds of millions of devices to open source systems is neither trivial nor uniformly feasible. Also, in labour markets where Microsoft tools are ubiquitous, the freedom to “switch” is often illusory.

The power asymmetry at stake is not only economic and cultural but also geopolitical. Several public institutions – from the Danish government (amid tensions with the US over Greenland) to the International Criminal Court (following US sanctions imposed on its staff) – have reconsidered their reliance on Microsoft’s services. This reliance has been further problematised by reports of Microsoft technologies being used in systems of mass surveillance targeting Palestinians during the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza. Although Microsoft has, in recent months, acknowledged breaches of its own terms and ethical principles, these developments have intensified calls – particularly within universities – to reassess the technological infrastructures on which they depend. 

In October 2025, the Right to Repair EU coalition sent a letter to the EU Commissioner for the Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy Jessika Roswall, and the Vice-President of the European Commission for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen, starkly asking: 

“How can the EU achieve digital and circular competitiveness if citizens and businesses remain subject to digital feudalism? (…) Thousands of repair events around the world are installing open source operating systems into laptops, saving people money and cutting waste. People are fighting back against fast tech. (…) But where are the EU institutions? Existing legislation offers no protection against this looming e-waste tsunami”. 

Letters and petitions, along with collective migrations to open-source systems, constitute forms of mobilisation and contestation, here understood in its literal sense as both a “calling to witness” and a “testing together”.

After months of campaigning, Microsoft conceded a one-year extension of free Windows 10 updates within the EEA. Collective action worked. But it postponed the problem rather than solved it. At large, European consumers are among the wealthiest groups in the world. What about consumers from the global majority? Well, when corporations impose hard limits, skilled communities find creative workarounds, effectively renegotiating legality in practice. Still, a single corporation’s decision can create significant costs for societies, including schools and universities, deepening digital divides, rendering millions of second-hand devices even less useful, etc. 

Obsolescence as a lens for social transformation

Obsolescence is more than a technical flaw – it is a metaphor for systemic dysfunction. In her book Progress and Regression (2025), Rahel Jaeggi argues that social change arises not from an ideal blueprint but from the dysfunctionality or obsolescence of the status quo: when established practices have outlived their usefulness, or when institutions are riddled with contradictions (Jaeggi, ibid: 93). When the state of affairs is obsolete, that is, unable to find solutions to current problems and crises, there comes the need for change.

To be sure, it is not self-evident when existing arrangements have become obsolete, let alone evident to everyone in the same way. However, the question that Jaeggi raises in her book has to do with whether institutions actually do what they say they do, or what they aspire to do, especially when they aim to address crises and societal problems. Jaeggi even goes further to argue that societies do not have fixed goals or objectives; their main function is to solve problems. Practices, institutions, or models become obsolete when they no longer effectively address current crises or challenges, but rather deny crises and petulantly cling on exhausted models and dysfunctional arrangements.

When law itself seems obsolete

Is the persistence of obsolescence merely an issue of weak enforcement or a sign of another type of obsolescence? If law itself becomes prematurely obsolete – unable to anticipate or respond to next year’s problems – we must ask: what is its value? 

In the EU Better Regulation agenda, “relevance” is a criterion used to evaluate whether legislation is appropriately aligned with the needs and problems of society. Unlike “effectiveness” (how well objectives are achieved) or “efficiency” (the cost benefit of achieving them), relevance is an underappreciated criterion that could be used to assess whether EU law actually addresses current and future needs and problems and whether the design of the law reflects these problems (Micklitz 2022: 230–231). In Jaeggi’s terms, solving problems requires not only the capacity to address crises but also to perceive them as problems in the first place.

These instances of collective action might emerge because the legal system has been unresponsive to specific problems, or even unable to recognise them. This begs the question of how institutions could become more reflexive, embedding contestation, experimentation, and plural voices into their processes. 

A crossroads: the Circular Economy Act

This is something that should be kept in mind as political institutions prepare strategic policies, such as the new Circular Economy Act. Given that the current discourse around the CEA reveals a focus on downstream waste management (e.g. recycling), it is crucial to ask whether public institutions possess the appropriate conceptual framework to effectively address unsustainable consumption and production, and to reflect on the potential influence of systemic and ideological blockages on the range of decisions and solutions they pursue. 

For instance, were recycling to be prioritised in the final Act over waste prevention, it would reflect a narrow, profit-driven logic rather than a genuine pursuit of sustainability objectives. A notion of circular economy mostly centred on recycling would remove complexity and impoverish the political debate, while also failing to recognise and respect the effort made by communities and citizens in upstream waste prevention. It would exemplify what Jaeggi calls “avoidance strategies” – regressive problem-solving that blocks the possibility of further experience on which the prospect of change depends (Jaeggi, ibid: 169). Regression “betrays the possible”.

Plural voices and democratic practice

Of course, one should avoid romanticising social movements and communities as inherently good, or epistemically superior. Such groups might also become particularistic in their demands. The question would then be whether it would be a suitable approach to integrate or include these actors into dominant institutions, if at all. Discussions around policy design and policy making, and the future of democracy in the EU could not be more timely, especially if NGOs die. It is clear that Europe must build spaces where citizens and institutions work side by side to tackle societal problems. 

On October 14th, 2025 – E-Waste Day and the infamous day of Windows 10 end of support – MEPs and EU officials, academics and citizens gathered in Brussels to debate the question of how citizens’ assemblies could strengthen Europe’s democratic fabric and whether a Permanent European Citizens’ Assembly should be established alongside the European Parliament. Coincidence? I think not.

This blog post has also been published on the Transformative Private Law Blog.