Can Peer-To-Peer Tool Rental Cut Your Carbon Footprint?
by April Streeter, Gothenburg, Sweden on 07.27.08
Thinking of the multiple home projects our family has undertaken under the last month of intensive homeowner repairs - repainting, refinishing of a damaged countertop, clean-out and setting up of a clothesline station in the laundry room - they nearly always engendered a trip to the hardware store to purchase a missing tool or tools. About half of those trips required car-borrowing for heavy schlepping or because the items were outside our bike circuit.
The E-bay of renting?
That same type of simple home repair project - in this case fixing a large wall mirror onto a wall - was what lead Frenchman Jeff Boudier to launch the Zilok peer-to-peer rental site in France in December 2007. Zilok launched in the U.S. earlier this spring and has now gathered around 15,000 members, mostly in large towns such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. Similar groups are up and running in Belgium, the UK and the Netherlands. The idea of neighbors lending tools to other neighbors isn't new (putting your zip code into the Zilok search engine makes it search in a 1.2 mile radius of your home - definitely bikeable). Irent2you is another site with a similar concept though a low tool inventory. In our close-knit neighborhood a tool library was one of the major ideas after we did a Northwest Earth Institute sustainability book group, but no-one wanted to be "tool central" or keep the list of who had what.
Peer-to-peer renting cuts car trips
Zilok's advantage is that renting tools for a small fee (for example, $2 to $5 per day for a cordless drill - the rentee sets fee and deposit) keep cash very local and gives rentees some security that the tool will come back unharmed. To me it's the next step in making neighborhoods and regions more self-sufficient and less dependent on those short car trips. Plus I don't need to own a power washer, a belt sander or a table saw - yeah! Seattle, Washington is unfortunately right now the nearest "neighborhood" to my Portland area with active Zilok members and tools and other goods for rent, but as soon as I make it back to PDX I'm putting some of my recent purchases out for rent to see how I fare and asking my neighbors to do the same. Via ::Journal Gazette
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If you're in North Portland, you can join the North Portland Tool Library: http://www.northportlandtoollibrary.org/
There has been some movement toward establishing local tool libraries in other Portland neighborhoods, but it's still in the early stages.
I like the idea of renting directly from your neighbors, though.
I used to do a lot of work out of a local non-profit workshop -- a minor membership fee gave you access to the building, hand tools and some power tools -- certain equipment use cost extra in either outright fees and/or in safety training.
We also could rent most of the tools for out of shop projects.
If you were new to a particular job there almost always someone experienced willing to give advice, and occasionally these local experts would give weekend courses.
If you needed a hand with a project -- well be willing to lend one and others would pay the karmic debt later :D Since I was fairly young I volunteered for "grunt duty" on a number of projects so I could get some much needed experience, my efforts were also rewarded with more experienced members willing to give me advice and/or assistance on a number of projects.
I'm hoping to find something similar here in Vancouver, so if anyone knows of something like it ...
Love the idea. My husband is cleaning out the shed right now and realizing how many of his tools he very rarely uses them. Always lots of projects he'd like to do, but few actually get done.
Cool part is how many are handmedowns from my grandfather and my great-uncle.
The Concordia neighborhood in PDX has a growing tool library, too. The Northeast Portland Tool Library (NEPTL) is open on Saturdays from 9am to 1pm. You can find it at Redeemer Lutheran Church at 5431 NE 20th Ave.
I think I like the idea, but I'm very picky about my tools and the tools I buy. It is impossible for someone to guarantee that the person I loan a tool to is going to use it properly and avoid longer term damage.
For instance, dropping a square on a cement floor will ruin it. It will not be square after than (unless you are extremely lucky). Also, if someone borrowed a surface planer and tried to trim a quarter inch off of a board all at once, that planer may not be problematic now, but the bearings are likely to fail later on even under normal use.
I support neighbors helping neighbors, but I would much rather go and help them do the job rather than let me tools out of sight for very long.
seems like this could be an offshoot of freecycle...
There is also www.rentnotbuy.com, which is run as a not-for-profit and is more focused on the consumption reduction aspect of renting. I've used that a few time to rent out my tools, worked very well.