The concept of the ‘sharing economy’ has been around for decades, and if you’ve used an accommodation-sharing platform like Airbnb or a parking-sharing app like JustPark, then you’re already part of it. Today, we still own a lot of goods with short life spans and low usage rates. As paying for services expands to new areas, people are inevitably rethinking about the need to own so many different products.
Find out how groups and individuals in the UK are already borrowing in their communities, or skip straight ahead to some ways you can do something bigger by borrowing, instead of buying.
Inspiration read
Borrowing from London’s Libraries of Things
A very non-traditional library
A Library of Things is a social enterprise that provides access to a variety of items for borrowing, rather than buying and owning them. The goal is to reduce waste, save money and boost the wider sharing economy. Libraries of Things operate similarly to a traditional library, where members sign up and borrow items from DIY tools and garden machinery to sewing machines and kitchen appliances, instead of books. London’s Library of Things has 19 locations across London, with over 10,000 items borrowed in 12 months – saving residents £326,000 by not buying, preventing 124 tonnes of carbon emissions and averting 64 tonnes of waste from landfill.
Borrowing is better
Buying stuff from Amazon or Argos is convenient – but endless consumerism doesn’t work for us, our wallets or the environment. Each time we buy a new tool or gadget, we’re part of a system that extracts natural materials and intensively releases carbon emissions to manufacture and ship them. For example, the UK is the second biggest producer of electrical waste in the world, and yet we still buy 1.7 million brand new electrical products each year. Appliance rental, especially for infrequently used items such as a carpet cleaner or a heavy-duty pressure washer, dramatically reduces the amount of products needed by society since they are shared, ensuring that product lives are extended and are properly recycled at the end of their useful life.
Sharing the platform so others can replicate
London’s Library of Things licenses its sharing platform to a host of different organisations, from a council wanting to deliver its net zero and cost-of-living goals, to community groups starting or running a lending library. They share their platform with retail or manufacturing companies wanting to become more circular, as well as to universities or housing providers that would like to offer a new, sustainable service. In addition to sharing their operational and community-building experiences, they also provide purpose-built software, self-serve lockers and supply chain contacts – making more sharing libraries viable, accessible and scalable!
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Inspiration listen
Do Something Bigger
In this, the first episode of the Carbon Copy Podcast series, Do Something Bigger, we introduce our year-long campaign: 25 Big Local Actions in 2025.
Do something bigger
Instead of owning goods, there will be more opportunities for sharing products. This may seem like an odd concept, but it’s merely another aspect to the sharing economy and borrowing things instead of buying them. Whether you are a community group or council looking to offer more sharing schemes – from products to transport – or a company looking for a new way of doing business, this trend will only grow in popularity and become bigger.
Open your own product share library
CEthical Consumer magazine has produced a list of all tool lending libraries around the UK to help you find your nearest location. If your local area would also benefit from a product share library, then visit the relevant network for help in starting one. Turn to the Share And Repair Network in Scotland, Benthyg Cymru in Wales, or the UK Sharing Network if you are based in England or Northern Ireland. Another great resource is the National Tool Library Group on Google Groups where over 1,000 tool librarians exchange advice.
Support a car sharing scheme
Peer-to-peer car sharing is where people offer privately-owned vehicles for rent to others via an online platform, whereas car clubs such as TripTo in mid-Wales work by giving members access to a car on a short-term rental basis. One car-club car typically replaces over 20 private cars – that’s almost 117,000 cars in total that are removed from the roads by all the current car club members in the UK. In Scotland, the Plugged-in Communities Grant supports electric car clubs for housing associations like Ore Valley and other community groups. CoMoUK is the national charity for shared transport schemes such as car clubs and bike share. Check out regional and community-run car clubs as well as CoMoUK’s guidance for community bike share schemes, and then go from there!
Turn your product into a service
Everything – from washing machines to wind turbines – will be available as a service, with customers (whether individuals, companies or government) paying for what they use on demand. That may seem like a bad deal for the purchaser who walks away with nothing of value, but the value is in the service provided and not in an expensive product. Companies benefit from taking big ticket items and turning them from products into services with higher profitability and sales than the traditional product-based model; and purchasers benefit from no big upfront payment or borrowing, more flexibility and a much lower risk of using an obsolete product.
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