Waste Less Live More Week-Borrow It

Day 2 of the Be Resourceful Challenge for Waste Less Live More Week is #Borrow It

I would imagine that the most common ‘borrowing’ that most people do is from the local library.
I LOVE our library, and the whole concept of libraries. Books for free! And then you get to change them when you’ve read them!

There are however, LOTS of things other than books that you can borrow too.
Think about how often you use most of the household tools in your house-not very often I am guessing. Even the lawnmower probably only comes out once a week during the Summer.
Now imagine if each street or community had a communal lawnmower, available for people to borrow when they needed it.
That would decrease the need for lawnmowers hugely!

When you stop and think about it, there are already quite a few borrowing options that are in common use:

• libraries-not just for books, but also for DVDs, and many allow you to access the internet on their computers too
• DVD and computer game hire
• dress agencies-I’ve never done it, but I am told you can hire posh frocks for all those Red Carpet occasions….
• tool rental

And now, there are loads of options for sharing within communities too:

• Streetbank and Streetclub are both platforms to enable you to share your stuff with your neighbours and the people in your community
  
  
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• If you have young kids, then it is well worth looking to see if you have a Toy library near you. And if you don’t, you could always look into setting one up
• Tool libraries-these are a great idea, and a way to share tools within a community. These are growing in popularity, but seem to be more common in the USA. We need more here!
• If you fancy borrowing a dog for a walk, then try Borrow my Doggy (yes, this is a real thing!)
  
• You can share your car by Car pooling. This is a fab way to have the flexibility of a car ‘on demand’ without all the associated costs
• Bike shares-Boris bikes in London and other schemes around the country. I also heard about a new global bike sharing platform called lock8.me on the radio last week-looks pretty cool!

What will you borrow today?!
Share your photos on Facebook or Twitter using the #BorrowIt and #WLLM14 hash-tags 🙂