Execs at Australian consumer electronics retailers will be watching closely as their peer in the UK, Currys boss Alex Baldock, has called on the government to slash VAT on refurbished electrical products to keep gadgets out of landfills.

“It has already been charged once on these products,” said Baldock. “I would like to see a radical reduction or entire cut on these products.”

Baldock’s comments hold weight as he heads the UK’s largest electrical goods retailer which has around 301 stores across the UK and Ireland.

Currys has joined the likes of eBay and Amazon in making pre-owned gadgets more accessible.

A strong focus for Baldock has been to extend the life of gadgets. New technology contributes more than 1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year, just under 3 per cent of the global total, making it the seventh biggest contributor, about half the size of the fashion industry, according to Our World in Data.

Repairing a smartphone just once can save more than 77kg of carbon emissions, according to research by the French ecological transition agency Ademe.

Currys is aiming to drive up repair and resale with measures to cut costs by way of initiatives such as using video calls to problem-solve basic problems that sometimes can potentially be fixed by simply pressing reset or reloading software.

Baldock says about 70 per cent of laptops returned have no hardware fault, with the issue typically being software-related, whereas for TVs, 30-40 per cent of those returned are in full working order.

A team of experts in Currys repair centre have been fixing web-enabled devices such as TVs. Now the company is even using its live video assistance offering to help customers solve problems with their fridges or ovens.

Repairing and selling refurbished items would help Currys reduce the 8.1m defunct gadgets sent off for recycling to external partner Environcom, just as the government is gearing up to potentially make sellers pay the full cost of that process under the “extended producer responsibility” (EPR) scheme.

He argues that recycling is expensive and if that cost cannot be passed on to customers, then retailers will do less of it.

Microsoft recently revealed a new relationship with Currys that allows Surface customers to get their notebooks repaired with Currys after the retailer became Microsoft’s first official retail repair partner in the UK.

Previously, consumers could only go through Microsoft’s own support channels. Now, under the new deal, they can also call on Currys ’repair capabilities, no matter which retailer they purchased their device from.

Some of Currys team members are believed to have raised concerns that the retailers push towards refurbished products and repairs of existing products will impact the sale of new products.

Baldock doesn’t share those opinions and instead says that its repair business feeds its refurbished product business, tapping into the circular economy trend which he has referred to as “a big source of competitive advantage.”