In a rather surprising move, Microsoft just handed the right to repair movement a big win. After increasing pressure from shareholders, the tech giant has announced that it is going to make it easier for consumers to repair devices that it sells them in the future.

Early this year, the company’s investors passed a resolution demanding the company investigate the impacts of right-to-repair on building a more sustainable world.

“Microsoft is a corporate leader in pledging to take substantial action to reduce climate emissions; yet our Company actively restricts consumer access to device repairability, undermining our sustainability commitments by failing to recognize a fundamental principle of electronics sustainability: that overall device environmental impact is principally determined by the length of its useful lifetime,” the resolution said.

As the adverse impacts of climate change rock much of the world, businesses have been under increasing pressure to be sustainable. With the advent of fast electronics—that are cheap and last for a year or two—and planned obsolescence, the amount of e-waste has been rising exponentially.

Companies such as Apple and John Deere have been vehement opposers of allowing consumers to repair their own devices. As the demand for consumer electronics continues to skyrocket each year, the need to extract more and more rare earth minerals from the earth also increases.

This is leading to an ecological collapse in some of the most fragile parts of the world, all the while the discarded electronics continue to fill up landfills and end up in oceans.

Over the last few years, consumers have been demanding the right to repair their own devices and make them last longer instead of replacing them with newer ones.

Regulators around the world are also increasingly supporting the movement. Early this year, the European Union announced its intention to force companies to use a standard charger for most consumer electronics to cut e-waste.

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