The Library Economy: A saving grace in the climate crisis

Photograph of a library

My partner and I recently moved house, which meant we had a lot of furniture to take apart and put back together, as well as an endless amount of shelves to put up and art to hang. As most people in this situation would do, we bought a drill. But now, after we have settled in, this drill sits in the airing cupboard. We may take it out periodically when we welcome new furniture into our home, or to adjust a shelf, but mostly it's unused, gathering dust, and taking up needed space.

This drill not only cost us a chunk of money, but it also needed materials to be built, a motor, steel drill bits, and a plastic carry case. It is something that probably didn’t need to be built when millions of other usable drills exist in the world, we just didn’t have access to them. What if, instead of buying our own, we could’ve walked into a local tool library, checked out our drill, use it for the month we needed it, and then returned it for someone else to use when they have furniture to build or a painting to hang? This is the basis of a library economy. 

The library economy takes an existing concept (the library you take books out of) and expands and re-contextualises it, where all (or very nearly all) products and services we need are available to all people, for free. An instruction for social ownership where communities can manage resources collectively, it is both a utopian and pragmatic concept, but it may be one of our only ways out of the never-ending consumption cycle that is killing the earth. 

There are endless examples that will make you wish the library economy was already a thing. Let's say you want to borrow a shovel to do some garden work, you can keep it for as long as you need, and then you return it for someone else to use. Or maybe you want to make homemade deep-fried doughnuts, you don’t own a deep fryer, but you can borrow one from the home goods library for the weekend, without being left with an expensive and bulky kitchen item you don’t often use. We can take this even further with larger items, such as tents, which are bulky and are only used a few times a year, or cars, which are indispensable but majorly costly. 

If you had a child, you could swap out items for their ever-growing needs, from a cot to a toddler bed, or shoes for the rainy season and a coat for winter–no longer needing to spend money and materials on something that is worn for only a few months. We could take this even further, with farming cooperatives working with cooking collectives to ensure an entire community could be provided with a range of healthy food from local and regional gardens. 

Borrow the item when you need it, and return it when you’re done. All of this without having to produce excessively, waste money, or leave stuff wasting away in storage. 

The rental economy 

We currently have a soft-copy version of the library economy in the world we live in today: the rental economy. In this version, you still borrow an item and return it after use, but you have to pay a fee for doing so. 

Most rental products are ones that would have been too expensive to invest in for a small task, or for when the item is only needed for a short amount of time. Popular uses of these are e-bike rentals in city centres across Europe, and clothing rentals as a way to stem the fast fashion industry. A great example of a company doing the rental economy on a larger scale is the Library of Things, and although it’s only currently available around London, it's an actionable way you can reduce unnecessary waste. 

Although the rental economy is an incredible step in the right direction, it’s a model which is rooted in capitalism so it is often focused on profit rather than the consumer benefit. It is also often inaccessible, with some services only operating in large cities, plus it has large barriers to entry due to the fact that these services are quite expensive. This expense could put people off when it’s hard to justify renting a dress for £50 for a weekend if you could buy a brand-new one for £10. 

The potential risks of the rental economy in our current society is that if it becomes popular, endless businesses will jump on the trend (as there have been with the two examples above) with growth outpacing demand which creates more waste than before. Like this bike share company that dumped over 10,000 service bicycles which were no longer in use.

Whereas, if we hold items in common, accessing them through a free library system, we can massively reduce the number of items produced, creating benefits for the community, the user, and the earth. 

The library economy

If we want to live sustainably, we need a library economy. A library economy would incentivise us to produce durable, long-last items that everyone can share and use when they need them, instead of an economy that produces around excess and planned obsolescence. This will also be an essential component on the move towards degrowth. (A topic we’ll explore soon.)

The library is a space which has been uncorrupted by the demands of consumerism. They give individuals or groups access to common resources to supply their needs, resources that belong to all of us. Through this, the library encourages us to be good stewards of the books we borrow, taking care of them, and asking us to leave them in the same condition we found them in. (Something we could be applying to the environment, too.)

A library economy would, of course, require a reorientation of our priorities, moving away from focusing on capital and competition to the centrality of humanity and cooperation. To do this, we need to work in a complementary way. A social ecosystem that fulfils the necessary roles a society needs by looking at differences not hierarchically, but collectively.

Everyone should find joy and satisfaction in the things they do. Some of us make bread, and others make clothes. Some create art, and others build homes. Together, we could have enough bread, clothes, art and homes for all. For the tasks no one enjoys, we can rotate or transform these tasks to make them less drudgerous and depressing. 

They could be funded in a variety of ways, whether it’s through taxation like our library systems are currently, a nominal fee, a subscription service, or a community–such as a block of flats or an entire town–contributing the items themselves. 

There are already projects in place for implementing the library economy into your very own community, with organisations like the Open Source Ecology and their work on the open access Global Village Construction Set. This is a DIY platform based on an inclusive economy of abundance. They are developing blueprints for open-source industrial machines that can be made at a fraction of commercial costs and shared for free.

Things are meant to be used, not hoarded or shut away. With all of us organising to decrease wasteful consumption and production, whilst ensuring that we all have (dignified) access to the necessities of life, we can create a shared economy where we all thrive, with a smaller impact on the planet. 

Inspiration and resources:

https://youtu.be/NOYa3YzVtyk

https://www.neweconomy.org.au/journal/issues/vol2/iss4/library-socialism/ 

https://www.libraryofthings.co.uk/

https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/