What is PrintCat?

Printers can be frustrating, easy to break and hard to fix. We want to understand why printers fail so that we can tell policymakers how future models can be made easier to repair. Repair reduces waste and lessens the strain on our planet’s resources.

With PrintCat, you can join our investigation. We’ve collected information on over 800 broken printers and we need your help to categorise them.

What do do I need to do?

Simply read the information about the broken printer and select the type of fault described from the list underneath. If you’re not sure, just select ‘I don’t know’ at the bottom. Once you’ve selected an option, we’ll show you another printer. The more printer faults you can categorise, the more we learn! PrintCat shows each printer to three people to help confirm the right category.

Where does PrintCat get data about broken printers?

PrintCat uses information from the Open Repair Alliance, which collects data about broken devices that real people around the world have tried to fix at community events, such as Repair Cafés and Restart Parties.

More questions?

Find out more, and give us your feedback, in the PrintCat discussion.