Sustainable Sharing
by Fred Horch, Principal Advisor, Sustainable Practice
Libraries are wonderfully sustainable. Borrowing a book from the library rather than buying it saves money (and resources). But did you know that many libraries now lend more than just books, providing a sustainable way to borrow things like tools and appliances?
Making it a practice to borrow and lend tools and possessions is a great way to achieve a more sustainable and resilient local economy. Manufacturing just one item, say a pressure washer that a dozen families can share, requires less capital and produces less pollution than making a dozen pressure washers. Plus, we free up more space in our basements and garages if we’re not storing power tools we rarely use. Yes, owning everything we might ever want can be more convenient, but with a smartphone, a few apps, and the Internet, we can now easily participate in the sharing economy.
With a quick Internet search, we can find local tool and equipment rental companies, many of which have a quick and easy way to reserve and pay online–some even deliver and pick up, saving the hassle of driving to the rental center. But the cost of rentals adds up, tempting us to buy a tool even if we seldom use it. That’s where a “library of things” can help tip the balance toward sustainability. Libraries that lend tools for free or a nominal cost make it financially attractive to be environmentally responsible and borrow rather than buy.
One library that is doing an especially great job of “borrowing beyond books” is the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, Maine. Last time I checked, they listed 422 items in a searchable database nicely organized into categories: Craft, Garden, Home, and Kitchen. This library has a great selection, and they’ve carefully curated the items they offer to provide sustainable choices. If you have yard waste you want to chip, you can borrow an electric wood chipper, for example. For any library interested in starting up a library of things, the Curtis Memorial Library is a great resource.
Besides lowering the cost of borrowing tools, another great thing about a “lending library of things” is that it provides an easy way to donate tools we own that aren’t getting much use. Some neighborhoods are lucky to have good communication among neighbors and a culture of sharing, but in many places the practice of lending tools to a neighbor has fallen out of fashion. We may be willing to lend our tools but unsure how to find borrowers. Donating a tool to a library can get it into circulation and revive the idea of community members helping each other.
Besides our local library, Brunswick and surrounding towns have other resources that help people share possessions: active Freecycle and Buy Nothing Project groups. The Freecycle Network is a grassroots movement of people who use email and the Internet to get and give free stuff in their local communities. The official mission of Freecycle is to “build a worldwide sharing movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.” I make it a habit to post to the local Freecycle email list whenever I need something that someone might be willing to give away (I found a great free picnic table this way) and post when we have items we no longer need. Visit freecycle.org or buynothingproject.org online to see if there are active groups near you.
The idea that we can live just as well by borrowing a thing for a time, being a good caretaker of it, then passing it along to the next person who has a need for it, brings to mind Wendell Berry’s famous observation that we can learn from “the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children.” For the sake of our planet and our children, be a borrower and a lender.
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