Tell us about the Library of Things. What is it and what inspired it’s incarnation?
Library of Things is a friendly space where you come and borrow useful things, such as power tools, gardening equipment, kitchenware, digital cameras, sewing machines, musical instruments, etc.
The idea came from a similar concept in Berlin called ‘Leihladen’ which means ‘borrow shop’. We thought it was a really smart way of solving lots of problems. Firstly, we don’t all have disposable income to spend on new stuff. Often there’s no point buying certain things when you’re only using them twice a year. There’s a stat that gets bandied around a lot that, on average, a drill is only used for 13 minutes of it’s lifetime.
Secondly, particularly in London, a lot of us live in tiny flats, so we’ve got no space to store things like carpet cleaners and pressure washers.
Thirdly, from an environmental standpoint we can’t keep buying and throwing away. LoT is currently located next to a recycling centre and it’s phenomenal the amount of perfectly good electronics and other stuff that gets piled high like mountains in massive silos.
Finally, there’s the social side. LoT, like any other library is a place where anyone can come so you might end up bumping into people from your area. We’ve had people come in and meet neighbours for the first time even though they have lived on the same street for five years.
How did you end up working in this area?
I was thinking about this yesterday actually, what was the first thing which got me angry or passionate enough to want to make a change? One of the things was a documentary about deforestation I watched aged about twelve. I’d been lucky enough to go to the rainforest as a kid and I watched this documentary and was just gobsmacked, furious. I thought it was really dim, why are we doing that? So I did a presentation for my school, based around the Amazon, asking them to imagine how gorgeous it is, all of the species, all of the benefits we get from it, then to imagine it all gone. I guess that was the start of me as a campaigner.
I grew up and learned a few things about how you can influence people and actually make change. I also thought about where my energy was most useful. As a young person based in the UK I decided my energy was probably better spent addressing the root causes of why we have such a strong consumer society than being out in Brazil tying myself to trees. I then started to realise how many other challenges are wrapped up in the same problem and how it’s affecting our mental health through the fact that we’re so disconnected.
I started working in social enterprise aged around 21. I came across this idea of taking an environmental or social challenge and using all the creativity and problem solving ability of humans, combined with a smart business model to solve it.