Borrowing may not seem an obvious action for cutting our carbon footprint, but Sharing Libraries are emerging as a popular arm of the circular economy.
Like most of the world, Iceland’s population stayed indoors during the COVID-19 pandemic. To ease the boredom of staring at the same walls for weeks on end, people thrust themselves into home improvements. But not everyone had the right tools lying around.
In the capital city, Reykjavik, people turned to the local Sharing Library. Much like a traditional book library, a Sharing Library – or Lending Library – is a repository of items that can be borrowed by signed-up members, except that what’s on offer is much more diverse.
The Need for Sharing Libraries
It all came about when Anna de Matos hit a brick wall while setting up a new home. Originally from Brazil, she studied conservation and restoration in the UK before settling in Iceland, so arrived with few possessions and a sparse support network. “I needed a drill, and I didn’t know anyone in Iceland that could lend me one,” she explains.
Renting was almost as expensive as buying in this notoriously pricy country. Second-hand shops didn’t stock what Anna needed at the time either.
The Circular Library Network Rises
Influenced by examples she knew of in other countries, Anna established the NGO Munasafn RVK Tool Library in 2018.
Having established a partnership with the City of Reykjavik, Anna opened the first sharing stations in a municipal library, where they became a natural extension of existing services.
Their inventory – like tool kit bundles – proved popular enough, especially for people who – like Anna – had access to limited resources. Then COVID-19 struck. “I never had more demand for borrowing tools than when I was stuck at home,” Anna recalls. “Everyone wanted to paint the walls. Everyone wanted to drill a hole.”
Although Iceland avoided a government-enforced lockdown, social distancing was observed and eventually gatherings of 20+ were prohibited. That made running a library tricky, but the spike in interest was an indication of how borrowing culture was bedding in.
It’s very interesting. It used to be mostly immigrants and foreign people, but in the last few years it’s been 50/50. A lot of Icelanders have actually started using it as well.
Anna de Matos
Sharing Libraries Meet Community Needs
Not every Sharing Library is intended for public use.
Francesca Boni is a researcher at Università Bocconi in Milan, Italy, where she has been looking into how state-of-the-art design can influence sharing behaviour as part of the MUSA – Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action Research project.
Out of this, Francesca facilitated the introduction of a Lending Library on campus and is unsurprised by how well students – most in their early 20s – have taken to it. She attributes this to the cost-savings it offers – the service is completely free – and a pre-existing “propensity for younger people in Milan towards sharing behaviour” such as public bike renting services.
The project integrates an automated inventory tracking system with a refurbished unit of smart lockers – the type used for parcel drop-offs when you’re not at home.
Francesca was hesitant about the library going live before being tested. People are wary of new ideas, she warns: one bad experience, and people may give up.
So, she assembled a small focus group of students. This phase revealed that the contents and borrowing policies should be tailored to the intended audience’s specific needs, but it’s convenience that gets them hooked.
On the back of this, Francesca came up with a bunch of ideas that makes the system user-friendly:
- The lending station stands in a busy part of the university main building for easy access.
- Students can book, collect, and return items directly via an app on their smartphones thanks to WIB Machines, the project partner who supplied the lockers, adapting the pre-loaded software, and Leila, who provided the Sharing Library management software
- As the Lending Library is fully integrated into the university network, students don’t even have to set up a new account or password to use it.
- Some products work in tandem – the football or basketball may need the air pump, and the power bank goes hand-in-hand with the multi-cable charger – so students are allowed to borrow two items at a time.
- Items can be borrowed for up to one week, but a return code is generated as soon as the locker door shuts so that “if they just want to use something for lunchtime, they can bring it back right away.”
Inventory for All Occasions
Even much of the inventory was determined via a bottom-up approach.
Francesca selected some core items but the rest was chosen by the university community via a straightforward survey distributed by student association Green Light for Business. Without this, products like noise-cancelling headphones – which are proving extremely popular “for neurodivergent people who need to focus” – would never have been considered.
I really appreciated the students pointing out items that could boost inclusion and make everybody feel comfortable at the university.
Francesca Boni
By the end of June 2025, after running for two months, the 52 items (some of which are duplicates) have been borrowed 175 times with the scientific calculator, podcast microphone, binoculars, badminton set, clothes steamer, and pack of playing cards among the most frequently loaned – a real mix of study, lifestyle, and entertainment.
Meanwhile, Reykjavik’s growing base of Sharing Libraries now offer around 2,000 items, all of which have been donated, incentivised by the reward of a free year-long membership. It works so well, they have sourced two of most items so that there’s a replacement in case of losses or damages.
They include a home projector, knitting machine, camping equipment, an iron, a sound system, a barbecue, an ice cream maker, a Nintendo DS, a sander, and a children’s party kit, consisting of plates, cups, and cutlery. Stock changes in summer and winter to suit the seasons, but each of the items are chosen to meet a demand.
A Load of Hot Air: Reducing Carbon Emissions
It’s striking how the schemes in both countries selected inventory not on a basis of maximising emission reductions, but for their appeal. Can a Lending Library do both?
In Milan, the project is measuring the environmental impact of sharing behaviour. Teaming up with a company called Spin 360, they selected three of the items and carried out life cycle assessments. The impacts and carbon emissions in the lifecycle stages of the selected products were analysed, starting from the extraction of raw materials and resources, up until disposal at the end of the product’s “life”.
Results varied. They found that a Lending Library makes little difference to the emissions of everyday items but has a profound benefit with lesser-used products.
For example, a student wouldn’t want to buy the air mattress, which they’ll only use a couple of times a year – maybe when a friend visits – after which it just takes up valuable space. Or the film projector, which has proved popular for movie nights but for individual borrowers is a low frequency-use item.
By sharing products, students are also sharing their impact rather than buying new and multiplying it.
Cutting Carbon by Stealth
It doesn’t work the same for everyday items. Most students have their own charger, for example, so the Sharing Library does nothing to reduce manufacturing demand – but it does normalise borrowing and it gets them out of a fix when their battery runs low on campus.
There’s a learning opportunity in this: despite evidence that European citizens are concerned about climate change, sustainability isn’t the main motivation for accessing a Sharing Library – purpose and convenience is.
The team in Iceland also knows this to be true. Their software offers CO2 reporting, but “that is generally not the focus of what our clients want,” Anna says.
She believes that too many carbon reduction initiatives fail because they ask the public to put the environment ahead of their own needs. A family with young children probably won’t take a 12-hour train journey to and from their one holiday a year when flying gets them there in a fraction of the time for half the cost. Forget “better choices”, make it the easiest option.
If we’re going to have a real systematic change, we need to meet people where they are rather than expecting them to be better than they are, and that is in the local community.
Anna de Matos
This is why Sharing Libraries reduce carbon emissions “by stealth” (as Anna describes it) – by giving people what they want, whether they know or care that it cuts emissions or not.
Check It Out!
Now Iceland is bringing this possibility to the world.
Back when social distancing rules made it tough to lend items, Anna saw a future in automation.
Getting this up and running took a capital injection, which excluded the non-profit. So in 2022, Anna split from the Munasafn RVK Tool Library to establish a tech startup called Circular Library Network (CLN) – a plug-and-play Lending Library infrastructure provider.
Hringrásarsetur Íslands – an NGO whose mission it is to progress the circular economy in Iceland – took over management of Reykjavik’s lending libraries, which it continues to this day, running the main location and five additional sharing stations throughout the city, with plans for three more.
Meanwhile, with a small grant from the government for R&D, Anna’s team at CLN had developed a self-checkout system which can be packaged and sold globally.
A one-off fee covers the hardware costs and buys project organisers the locking controllers and training in how to use them. Then they pay a modest monthly subscription for access to the operational software and for Circular Library Network to maintain and update it. It also gets them access to a bespoke community platform where clients get “peer-to-peer support and talk to each other and learn best practices”.
It’s a fully modular and scalable system running on a simplified version of the myTurn inventory tracking software, which can be affixed to any type of storage system, even using the cheapest IKEA furniture, Anna confirms. “It doesn’t matter [what you use], because we can install the hardware into it and make it work. And that’s the whole point: we give you all the tools so you can do it for yourself.”
Similar to Bocconi university’s smart lockers, end users can operate this by an app. It wasn’t always that way. Earlier iterations required a touchscreen, but that forced hosting organisations to fork out an extra 300 to 2,000 Euros just to get started, which was seen as too much of a barrier.
Growing Demand for Automated Sharing Libraries
There is unquestionably a growing demand for this type of service.
Having documented their product on social media, CLN received a lot of requests to buy the system. Anna was a little sceptical at first, so she opened an online signup sheet and asked enquirers to pay one Euro to confirm their intent, thinking this would filter out the timewasters. “Within a year, we had 1,600 Euros.”
This was helpful seed money for manufacturing the first systems and CLN systems are now in demand all over the EU. It’s currently working on 45 orders that will be used across eight countries by the end of 2025. They’ll also be opening another three lending stations in Reykjavik, expanding into community hubs where footfall is high: “Two of them in coworking spaces and one of them in a swimming pool.”
Advice for Starting a Lending Library
We asked both our CityChangers for the most pressing considerations when setting up a new tool library or Lending Library.
Get the Inventory Right
“I would say, start with the user and understand what their needs are,” Francesca says.
Engineer discussions with the target community to shape every element of your Lending Library, she adds. Their needs determine “the number of items, the choice of items, the amount of time you’re going to allow users to borrow things, the web app visual”.
It can also shape how you communicate it, “because if you’re saying something to a 20-year-old, it’s different than saying it to a 50-year-old”. Tiktok will appeal to some, and community message boards to others.
Minimise Expenses, But Pay Them Anyway
Don’t fall into the trap of trying to do it all cost-free, Anna warns. And don’t assume an automated system is without the need for human support.
In the early days of CLN, she visited a pioneering example of a Sharing Library in Canada, which itself launched following the success of the Toronto Tool Library. Not being automated, it was fully reliant on volunteers, but paid-up customers expected the kind of service offered by salaried staff. That pressure undermined morale and volunteer retention was low.
CLN learnt from their experience. A portion of membership fees helps to pay a single employee two days a week to check Reykjavik’s lockers and repair items. By valuing these roles and the skills people who fill them need, we also ensure the ongoing reliability of the service.
If we’re going to make the circular economy actually happen, then we need to put our money where our mouth is and actually start making those jobs.
Anna de Matos
Connect With Your Allies
Francesca’s experience shows us that, even when people are supporters, there’s still a lot of work involved in bringing them together.
“This is the epitome of a multi-stakeholder project. I have an Excel file of over 50 names of people that I had to talk to in order to get this done, because every single step has to be approved by someone.”
That stretched from making sure estates personnel were at hand to open the gates when the lockers were delivered, to coordinating cybersecurity protocol and data privacy policies with IT staff when integrating the Sharing Library with the university network.
“Everything had to be done from scratch,” Francesca admits. “The first time you do it, it’s always the hardest because you need to figure out who to talk to, to implement every single aspect that you need. You need to talk to them, to convince them, but first of all you need to find them.”
Anna warns that it’s even harder if those who must sign off on a project (or especially a budget) are unfamiliar with borrowing culture. “I had people from cities, mayors, say to me, ‘I’ll never use this’.”
She reminds them how fortunate they are that this is a choice; their electorate might not be so lucky. It’s easier now CLN has positive examples to share. “When we started, no one wanted it. It took us two years to get into the first library, and then six months to get into another five.”
That can also be where the data about carbon emission reductions does come in handy, as it appeals to those who have responsibilities to meet climate targets.
The Future of Community Sharing
Anna predicts that the number of Sharing Libraries will only continue to grow as organisations realise their potential. “We didn’t realise when we were building this of how many user cases this could be useful for. We’re also working with real estate, some municipalities, corporations, and retailers.”
There’s a similar sentiment in Milan. Francesca has eyes on placing lending stations directly in student residences, and several local companies have expressed interest in hosting their own office-based version. “It does check off a few boxes in terms of welfare, environmental sustainability, and social sustainability, so we think it can be quite scalable for companies too, with a different selection of items.”
Sharing Libraries: Key Takeaways
Benefits:
- A Lending Library can fill gaps in provision for communities, especially for low-income households or those with limited support networks
- Borrowing reduces demand for new manufactured products, impacting lifetime carbon emissions
- Lending stations can be set up quite cheaply by utilising repurposed lockers and donated inventory
Challenges:
- Needs an inventory-tracking system, and maybe staffing, which requires funding
- The more complex (and technical) the Sharing Library, the more actors need to be brought on board, which is time-intensive
- Systems and policies need to meet local conditions and be tested before going public; a single bad experience could put people off
How to get started:
- Determine the inventory by asking the community what their needs are
- Don’t only offer practical items – think what they’ll find fun, too
- Get set up in a location with a lot of footfall to raise the curiosity of passers-by
For more pointers on getting started, both Shareable and Leila have compiled helpful guides.