Dear councillors & council officers
Start a quality Library of Things with your community!
✅ Achieve your net zero goals, visibly
✅ Support residents with the cost-of-living crisis
✅ Work with a trusted, award-winning social enterprise partner
✅ Join a movement of councils & communities delivering
✅ Circular economy solutions across the UK
Cllr Mete Coban, Hackney Council
“Library of Things helps us achieve our net zero goals in a visible way, and helps our residents with the cost-of-living crisis”
Watch Library of Things in action
Here you can see Library of Things in a council library. It also works well in community venues, co-working spaces and reuse hubs!
Buy an ‘off-the-shelf’ Library of Things!
You can choose to use just our software to power your shop or mobile lending library – or you can order a ready-made locker:
Library of Things operated
X% share of rental revenue, fully stocked with LoT’s tried and tested catalogue, maintenance included
DIY
Keep all rental revenue, stock and maintain your own kiosk
Compact - 10 lockers
£15k up front
£200 / pm
£7.5k up front
£100 / pm
Standard - 20 lockers
£30k up front
£400 / pm
£15k up front
£150 / pm
Plus - 30 lockers
£40k up front
£600 / pm
£25k up front
£200 / pm
Custom
Talk to us
Talk to us
Got a shopfront and don’t need a kiosk?
Talk to us
Find out more
I want one of these! What next?
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Locker-based Libraries of Things work well inside high footfall, publicly accessible spaces like libraries, shopping centres, coworking spaces, reuse hubs and other community venues. Look for:
- opening hours spanning 6+ days per week
- rent-free space
- enough space to house the locker without blocking fire exits or walkways when in use.
Read our full criteria for what makes a good host space here. -
A Library of Things is successful if it’s regularly used and supported by local people. In London, we aim for each location to have over 30 ‘borrows’ per week to cover its running costs.
To test local demand before you invest in a Library of Things:
- Start a campaign using our campaign tool here and gather 250+ expressions of interest from local people
- Hold a community assembly or webinar
Once up and running, you will need to promote the service regularly to ensure ongoing usage
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Here are some tried and tested fundraising options:
1. Grants – like National Lottery Community Fund’s Awards for All (up to £20,000)
2. Local crowdfunding campaign – Crowdfunder offers a range of match-funding options
3. Councils – some councils have available budget in their climate, sustainability and waste teams, libraries capital budgets, CIL funds, or local grant-funding programmes. We recommend having a conversation with a councillor or senior officer working in climate and/or sustainability to see if they’re supportive of this initiative.
Find out more
Every day, our platform powers dozens of item rental locations – saving money for thousands of people, and preventing hundreds of tonnes of waste and emissions through purchase prevention and wider behaviour change.
Here’s the impact you could have in one neighbourhood every year (data is based on one of our locations, Hammersmith Library of Things):
Impact you could have
2,000+ people
borrowing not buying
£280,000
saved by members
15 tonnes
electronic products reused
64% people
say they save money through Library of Things
85% people
feel prouder of & better connected to their neighbourhood
