Aiming to recruit a worker for our Community Toolbox, to work with customers and maintain our stock items.
Wellbeing Works
Go To WebsiteAddressed Challenges:
- Waste / Circular Economy
Action Areas:
- Circular Economy
Initiative Purpose:
- Adaptation
The Story
The Community Toolbox is a library of things people can hire for a nominal fee instead of buying. Members are able to hire items for DIY and decorating, cleaning, gardening, camping and outdoor entertaining. These items are generally expensive, difficult to store, and are used relatively infrequently, so being able to hire them when you need them means that members are saving money and space, and are supporting a circular economy of re-using items instead of buying them.
We have also set up a recycling hub in the Community Toolbox where people can bring their batteries, crisp packets, cans, and paper. We have arrangements to forward the waste to Wellgate for general dry mixed recycling, or Tesco for batteries and soft plastics.
Earlier this year we entered a competition to have support from a media company through the Rank Foundation, and were fortunate to win. We now have a short film to help us promote the Community Toolbox to help raise awareness of the model and the benefits it brings.
Based on our work through the Community Toolbox, we are now members of the Scottish Share and Repair Network Advisory Group and have given presentations on Toolbox at a local and national level.
We are currently in discussion with Linlathen and Midcraigie community forum with a view to opening a Toolbox sub-station in their local area. This will mean that people do not need to come in to town to access the Community Toolbox, they will have access to tools and equipment in their own neighbourhood. This will also educate and inform people on the benefits of a circular approach to tackling inequalities, create volunteering opportunities, and empowering local communities. Our hope is that if this model is successful, we can establish Toolbox sub-stations across the city
Success & Outcomes
We have seen an increase of memberships as well as a large increase in the number of hires. This is a massive win!
Advice for others looking to do something similar
We have had to work hard to spread the word and raise awareness of the Community Toolbox, as people often don’t become members until they need to hire something. We also learned that having too much stock is not always a good thing, and at the start of the year we streamlined our itinerary to focus on the items that were hired the most.
In hindsight, we would have introduced hire fees from the beginning. Also trust that while we are aiming to make our toolbox resource accessible to everyone in the community, we also need to make it sustainable and have value.