Our LoT Community
It's not just us undertaking this important initiative. We're very lucky to be part of a community of similar organisations, all trying to make a difference by setting up their own Library of Things. If you're ever in their areas, we highly recommend you check them out.
CAG Oxfordshire facilitates a network of over 100 community action groups working across Oxfordshire to make it a safer, fairer, greener, more sustainable place to live, work and visit. Together, we’re building an Oxfordshire with resilient and empowered communities, so that people and planet can thrive within ecological limits.
Started in 2001, the network is the largest of its kind in the UK. Our member groups work in their local communities organising events and projects to take action on issues including waste, transport, food, energy, biodiversity and social justice.
SHARE Oxford is a community action group aiming to reduce consumption and waste, by sharing and repairing the things we use so we don’t have to buy them. We hire out things that people only need occasionally - for example pressure washers, sewing machines or gazebos - and repair those which would otherwise be thrown away. Along with similar groups across the county and the wider world, we are working to help solve the climate crisis. This is about our local community doing our bit, inspiring others to do the same and helping everyone live more sustainably. We started our Library of Things and Repair Cafés in 2019 and are looking forward to partnering with a growing community of sharers and repairers across Oxfordshire!
Oxford Wood Recycling (OWR) is a social enterprise and charity offering commercial and domestic wood waste collections around Oxfordshire, saving wood from landfill by recycling and reclaiming wood for reuse. OWR empowers the community to support their environment by purchasing reclaimed and locally sourced timber for DIY and manufactured items from the Wood Shop in Abingdon. OWR also transforms lives by supporting people excluded from working to move towards and into employment.
The aim of our Library of Things is to offer a service to our local community that provides them with a cost effective benefit of borrowing tools rather than buying new. This will reduce the need for new items to be purchased which in turn will reduce the amount of waste. Our Library will include a range of power tools and accessories, required and requested by our community.
Bicester Green is a Centre for Sustainability and Reuse aiming to save materials from waste. As a volunteer run and led organisation we focus on sharing skills as we repurpose, refill, repair, recycle, reuse and reduce. Our workshops focus on woodwork, electrical and bicycles, where our volunteers work on donations from the public to make them ready for a new home. For the last 10 years Bicester Green has been seeking alternatives to buying new for the local community, for some time we’ve been considering another option, that of hiring or renting, and now in our new space on Sheep Street we have launched our very own Library of Things.
Our Library of Things hires items such as DIY tools, garden tools, hand tools and equipment for around the home that you might not need to use very often or take up storage space that you simply don’t have available and aims to:
- Prevent the need to buy new things
- Reduce the need to own stuff
- Shares the resources of the planet
- Creates a Sharing Community
- Reduces Waste, CO2 & Impact on Climate Change