Great point, I also think that if we’re more responsible about what we use those technologies for it would also make a huge difference in the environmental impact. If you get rid of all the useless extravagances of the rich we can have a much leaner society resource-wise and still have everyone have a good quality of life.
100%. You need a lot less raw material when you design things to be durable, repairable, interchangeable, and recyclable.
Couple that with combating the “everyone needs to personally own everything they want to use” notion that leads to overconsumption. Loads of things can just work through formal or informal libraries, e.g., no one needs to personally own a carpet cleaner; better to share a really nice one than have dozens of crappy ones in circulation.
I would agree that shared resources are more efficient, and you make a great point about the quality aspect. On the other hand, you don’t want walmart monopolizing the carpet cleaners either, as that could bring up the fear of “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” that the tech bros are pushing.
To kinda build on my first comment, we need to get away from the megacorps and their unconstrained hierarchies and replace them with sensible democratically governed cooperatives. I would image a home improvement store run by a local co-op would be a good choice to rent your cleaner from, much better than home cheapo.
Yeah, I’m not even thinking about renting, though that does have its place. I basically just really like that my local library lends out all the tools that I only need once in a blue moon.
There’s times that I want to buy stuff and just give it to my library so I dont have to store it for the 99% of the time that I’m not using it. Don’t think it actually works that way, though.
That’s awesome if your town can make that work, is it from tax money or donations? Is it a big town? I would imaging it would be more difficult to maintain the tools the bigger the city/library is
I assume just tax money like the books in the library. They dont solicit for donations (for money or tools), and the tools are all pretty much the type you would expect for rentals (more durable than you or I would buy for something we might only need once). For example, they have all Park Tool brand bike tools. There might be liability reasons not to take tool donations.
They also have art, seeds, kids toys, puzzles, and musical instruments.
They take donations of seeds (which I contribute to) and puzzles.
It’s a library system with maybe like 8 locations, and they spread the non-book collections across the different branches, so one has the tools, another has art, etc.
I actually just found some neat stats on my local system, and the expenditure for the system’s whole collection (including books, digital media, and everything) is only 1/10th of the total expenditure. The way they lresent the numbers means i have to calculate things a little weirdly. On average, they spend $0.75 per use of an item. This is going to fluctuate year to year since I only see yearly expenditure and usage, and obviously, items last more than a year.
I dont have usage rates of the tools specifically, but something like a bike tools kit that costs $280 would need to be used 210 times to be hit the same cost per use of an item. I think that’s definitely doable because the rental periods are only 1 week, and you often need to place a hold to be able to get something.
Total expenditure of my library on collections is $8 per capita per year. I would gladly 10x that with my tax money. Obviously storage/administration isnt free, but still, it’s absolutely affordable, and I think it would be even for a small system.
Awesome, thank you for the detailed breakdown. Sounds like the system in your area is very well managed. Always nice to hear the things different people/municipalities are trying.
Great point, I also think that if we’re more responsible about what we use those technologies for it would also make a huge difference in the environmental impact. If you get rid of all the useless extravagances of the rich we can have a much leaner society resource-wise and still have everyone have a good quality of life.
100%. You need a lot less raw material when you design things to be durable, repairable, interchangeable, and recyclable.
Couple that with combating the “everyone needs to personally own everything they want to use” notion that leads to overconsumption. Loads of things can just work through formal or informal libraries, e.g., no one needs to personally own a carpet cleaner; better to share a really nice one than have dozens of crappy ones in circulation.
I would agree that shared resources are more efficient, and you make a great point about the quality aspect. On the other hand, you don’t want walmart monopolizing the carpet cleaners either, as that could bring up the fear of “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” that the tech bros are pushing.
To kinda build on my first comment, we need to get away from the megacorps and their unconstrained hierarchies and replace them with sensible democratically governed cooperatives. I would image a home improvement store run by a local co-op would be a good choice to rent your cleaner from, much better than home cheapo.
Yeah, I’m not even thinking about renting, though that does have its place. I basically just really like that my local library lends out all the tools that I only need once in a blue moon.
There’s times that I want to buy stuff and just give it to my library so I dont have to store it for the 99% of the time that I’m not using it. Don’t think it actually works that way, though.
That’s awesome if your town can make that work, is it from tax money or donations? Is it a big town? I would imaging it would be more difficult to maintain the tools the bigger the city/library is
I assume just tax money like the books in the library. They dont solicit for donations (for money or tools), and the tools are all pretty much the type you would expect for rentals (more durable than you or I would buy for something we might only need once). For example, they have all Park Tool brand bike tools. There might be liability reasons not to take tool donations.
They also have art, seeds, kids toys, puzzles, and musical instruments.
They take donations of seeds (which I contribute to) and puzzles.
It’s a library system with maybe like 8 locations, and they spread the non-book collections across the different branches, so one has the tools, another has art, etc.
I actually just found some neat stats on my local system, and the expenditure for the system’s whole collection (including books, digital media, and everything) is only 1/10th of the total expenditure. The way they lresent the numbers means i have to calculate things a little weirdly. On average, they spend $0.75 per use of an item. This is going to fluctuate year to year since I only see yearly expenditure and usage, and obviously, items last more than a year.
I dont have usage rates of the tools specifically, but something like a bike tools kit that costs $280 would need to be used 210 times to be hit the same cost per use of an item. I think that’s definitely doable because the rental periods are only 1 week, and you often need to place a hold to be able to get something.
Total expenditure of my library on collections is $8 per capita per year. I would gladly 10x that with my tax money. Obviously storage/administration isnt free, but still, it’s absolutely affordable, and I think it would be even for a small system.
Awesome, thank you for the detailed breakdown. Sounds like the system in your area is very well managed. Always nice to hear the things different people/municipalities are trying.