Grassroots organisations that enable people to share are helping local communities to waste less and live better. Andrea Lockerbie speaks to three organisations, each with a different approach, about how they do this and the challenges they face.
Library of Things: Making borrowing more convenient and accessible
For the Library of Things, its journey began in 2014 in West Norwood, London. A group of three female friends ran a three-month experiment from the local library to see if people would share and borrow items rather than buy.
Today, the Library of Things operates in 21 different London locations and has licensed its technology to entities in Sheffield, Spain and the Netherlands.
Initially, the library lent out donated tools with the help of volunteers, but it embraced technology and developed a platform with a front-end website, self-service lockers and back-end software. All with the aim to make borrowing more convenient and accessible.
Library of Things now works with manufacturers, including Bosch, Karcher and STIHL, from whom it buys equipment at a discount to stock its libraries.
Ranjit Singh, partnership lead, explains: “To scale, we realised that having multiple brands means that you have to buy spare parts from 50 brands, and you have to upskill your technicians across 50 brands. So, when we migrated to the locker solution, we concentrated the number of brands.”
It now mainly works with four brands, which simplifies the buying of spare parts and the skills needed by its technicians, as well as ensuring a level of quality and durability.
A team of technicians spend around eight hours a week at each location, repairing and maintaining the items. Repair data is shared with its manufacturing partners, who are all curious about rental and its future role.
Those who borrow an item pay a one-off £2.50 joining fee, then pay as they go for whatever they want to borrow. Fees are in line with the cost of the item, and there are discounts for those who need them. For some locations, the charges cover the costs and generate a profit, but around 60% of the sites need time to build up to this.
Library of Things has impact investors, and additional grants or funding are important. As a social enterprise, the model is to provide a solution for councils, who need to meet waste reduction and climate goals and, increasingly, cost-of-living challenges facing their residents.
Councils fund the set-up costs and provide premises. The Library of Things delivers the end-to-end solution, including community outreach, design, fabrication and installation of lockers, and the launch. The team meets councils monthly, and each quarter, all council partners come together to plan community engagement and awareness building.
There’s been a lot of interest in the model, and the organisation now offers its solution and expertise to others. Talks have been held with councils outside of London in the UK, as well as in Europe. Some want to use its software with existing community groups, some want its locker solution, and some want a combination.
There is no desire to displace the work of community groups. Singh says: “We want more community groups to thrive, and if our software can help them, if our expertise can help them, we want to be part of that journey.”
From when it started until the end of March 2025, the Library of Things has lent 77,000 items. This has saved 1,550 tonnes of carbon and £11m. Almost half (48.8%) of its users said they buy fewer things and are more likely to rent or buy second-hand.
Does the locker model remove the sense of connection with communities? Feedback suggests it doesn’t. The Library of Things gets hundreds of stories shared with it each month, via social media or email.
“There’s all that richness which isn’t captured in a metric,” says Charlotte Thorpe, marketing lead. Often, stories centre on joy or connection achieved through sharing or completing a task. Someone might borrow a drill to put up some shelves for a friend. One man borrowed a metal detector to find his lost wedding ring.
But funding and space are key challenges. Thorpe explains that funding in this area ‘comes from stretched local authority pots that are all disparate, borough or town-based’. She suggests a dedicated funding stream to support the rollout of sharing libraries across the country.
“Are there ways that you can make it easier to build partnerships across the ecosystem, across waste management, local government, education, and charities, to really accelerate this?” she asks. Singh proposes a 20-year circularity plan, as they have in the Netherlands.
More research, and funding, is also needed to understand how to unlock sharing for more people – something the Library of Things would be happy to undertake in partnership with others, as it seeks to make sharing more mainstream.
The Share Shed: Using reuse to build a positive community
Mirella Ferraz pitched the idea of a library of things to her employer, the charity Network of Wellbeing in South Devon, after reading an article about one. They got on board, so in 2017, after consulting with the local community and approaching the town council for help, the Share Shed was launched in Totnes.
The town council lent the project a rent-free garage for six months, the community donated items, and the project secured a small amount of funding from the National Lottery Community Fund, allowing it to open for three hours on Saturdays.
Ferraz says support from the town council has been ‘absolutely key’. Once the project got going, nearby councils started getting in touch. Word of mouth and social media – Facebook, Instagram and now TikTok – are the main ways people hear about the project.
In 2019, after being shortlisted for funding from The People’s Projects, run by The National Lottery, the project had 15 days to put together a campaign to persuade the public to vote for it.
Mark Jeffreys, one of the Share Shed co-founders, also a musician, came up with a catchy song, and they put together a playful video. This was ‘crucial’ in spreading the word, gaining votes and winning the £48,599, which enabled it to buy and convert a van into ‘the world’s first mobile library of things’.
Now, the Share Shed serves seven towns in South Devon on a weekly basis and loans over 350 items. Over the last eight years, items have been borrowed over 7,000 times, saving people £510,000 and over 329 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
But, as a not-for-profit project, it is reliant on funding, grants and volunteers. Some funding has come from the local and county councils and other organisations, but the National Lottery has been ‘by far the biggest, most crucial support’.
The Share Shed’s trade income – from membership fees, item loan fees, low-cost ticket sales for some events and the occasional donation – only covers about 25% of its costs.
In 2024, on the verge of closing, the project launched a Crowdfunder campaign ‘as an act of desperation’ to raise funds to keep it going while it worked on a major funding bid with the National Lottery Community Fund.
Thankfully, the bid was successful, securing £252,316 over four years, for the Share Shed to deliver a project called ‘Happier People and Stronger Communities through Share and Repair in South Devon’.
This latest grant enables the project to offer free membership for low-income households, giving people access to items that they otherwise can’t afford or store. There is also a ‘pay it forward’ scheme for people to donate towards the borrowing fees of others, and items can now be borrowed by day, rather than week.
The Share Shed is fortunate to have committed volunteers, many retired, who have helped for years. Ferraz and Jeffreys are good at assessing their skills and allocating appropriate roles. But equally important is the time taken to properly acknowledge and appreciate volunteers.
Each year there is a Christmas gathering, with a meal, drinks and a small gift like a chocolate bar, along with a personal card. In the summer, there is a picnic. Feedback from volunteers has shown that these actions matter – volunteers need to feel valued.
The Share Shed also works closely with local repair cafes. When items break, they are taken to the repair cafe, where volunteers fix them. In return, the Share Shed makes a financial donation. The organisations promote and help each other. The Share Shed helped set up a new repair café in Buckfastleigh and is helping to revive one in Ivybridge.
Community events are also part of its work. Two big, free events are organised by the Share Shed. One of these is ShareFest, a day-long festival on sharing, repairing, swapping and making, that brings together 800 people and involves 40 partners; and the other is the WoolFest, a family-friendly festival run in collaboration with the Woolly Nanas to celebrate the heritage of the ancient woollen town, Buckfastleigh.
While each library of things has its own model, Ferraz believes ‘no one so far has fundamentally cracked how to make the maths add up’. She adds that some projects are ‘more resilient than others’ – and highlights Scotland, where she recently visited the Edinburgh Tool Library, as an example of what can be achieved when the government sets strategic goals and allocates dedicated funding.
Olio: How to build on initial success
Olio was co-founded by Tessa Clarke in 2015 as a hyper-local app to share surplus food with neighbours. Now, users can also give, lend or sell pre-owned household items to avoid throwing away and buying new.
“We founded Olio as a business because we believe deeply in the power of enterprise to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges,” Clarke says. “A sustainable financial model has always been central to our mission, and our commitment to doing business the right way is reflected in our B Corp certification, which we secured several years ago.”
Since it began, it has amassed over eight million users, enabled the sharing of 130 million meals and 15 million household items and saved 293,000 tonnes of CO2e. Around three-quarters of Olio users report improved mental health, and 84% report improved financial wellbeing.
Clarke explains that, today, around 90% of its revenue comes from the services it provides to businesses.
“Through our nationwide Food Waste Hero volunteer network, we collect and redistribute surplus food from retailers and food-service operators directly to local communities via the Olio app,” Clarke says.
“These businesses pay Olio to ensure their surplus food is eaten rather than sent to waste streams via traditional waste-management routes. The remaining 10% of revenue is generated through advertising and a share of users upgrading to Olio’s premium app features.”
Looking ahead, Clarke expects its revenue mix to evolve. It has recently launched two new offerings. The first is a product that encourages the Olio community to purchase food still within its discounting window from stores, thereby reducing markdown losses for retailers.
The second is an expanded volunteer-management platform that now supports charity volunteers as well as Olio’s own network. This streamlines donations and enables better data capture.
Clarke says: “We anticipate these innovations will account for a growing share of our revenue over time. While food waste remains our core focus, we have already run successful experiments in non-food redistribution, and this is an area we’re excited to explore further in partnership with forward-thinking collaborators.”
For Olio, its key challenge is ‘the exceptionally long sales cycle when working with large enterprises, often stretching over several years’.
Clarke adds: “At the same time, there is currently limited regulatory or commercial pressure on businesses in the UK to prioritise the redistribution of their unsold or unserved food, rather than sending it into waste streams. This means we’re working hard to drive behavioural and operational change in a landscape where the incentives to act sustainably are still far too weak.”
As a tech-first solution, Clarke believes Olio is ‘inherently highly scalable’ and has demonstrated the ability to roll out with major retailers across thousands of stores within weeks.
“The infrastructure, technology, and community are all in place; what’s missing is the external momentum to accelerate adoption,” she says.
“We urgently need a policy that creates meaningful incentives for businesses to tackle their food waste. Mandatory food-waste reporting for large businesses would be a powerful first step, shining a light on the scale of the problem and driving accountability.”
“We’d also welcome the introduction of a Good Samaritan law – which protects food donors and food-distribution partners from liability when donating in good faith – as well as tax credits for businesses that donate surplus food to charities and community groups. Together, these measures would unlock far greater ambition and action across the industry.”