In addition, 97% of food waste ends up in landfills, and the methane gas released from rotting food – the same thing that’s released in your refrigerator drawers, causing perishables to expire faster – is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. So, reducing food waste has an environmental impact as well, playing an important role in curbing climate change.

Addressing food waste through prevention, redistribution, and composting is an emerging focus for city leaders. Inspired, in part, by the report Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill, by Dana Gunders, staff scientist at the NRDC, food waste is a hot topic.

Despite the magnitude of the problem, solutions exist to prevent food waste—many of them are fairly easy and inexpensive to implement. In fact, a great deal of food waste prevention can be accomplished simply by changing people’s habits.

Everyone can help reduce food waste, and some steps elected officials, city managers, and other leaders can take to make food waste prevention a widespread practice. Countless resources, tools, and initiatives to prevent waste and draw attention to the issue have already been created:

• France became the first country to ban supermarkets from disposing of unsold food. Supermarkets in France now donate unsold food to charities and food banks.
• The Food Too Good to Waste toolkit provides families and communities both strategies and tools resulting in a nearly 50% reduction in preventable food waste.
• Just Eat It, a documentary film about food waste, is screened around the world.
• National Geographic features the ugly foods movement in its cover story, How ‘Ugly’ Fruits and Vegetables Can Help Solve World Hunger.
• ReFED – a collaboration of more than thirty business, nonprofit, foundation and government leaders committed to reducing United States food waste – creates numerous resources, including a Solutions to Food Waste interactive chart and the Roadmap to Reduce U.S. Food Waste by 20 Percent.
• WRAP, a UK organization that works in “the space between governments, businesses, communities, thinkers and individuals,” creates the Love Food Hate Waste program to educate and instruct people about food waste prevention strategies.
• SHARECITY is crowdsourcing information about food sharing activities enabled by Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). They’re creating a searchable database of 100 cities around the world.
• Save Food, a joint initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Messe Düsseldorf, and interpack, forms to fight world food waste and loss through a global alliance of all stakeholders.
• Italy offers tax breaks to supermarkets that donate their waste food to charity.
• FoodCloud announces a ground-breaking partnership with Tesco Ireland to redistribute surplus food from 147 grocery stores to charities and community groups.
• The Real Junk Food Project creates cafés in the UK that serve restaurant-quality food from produce headed to the landfill.
• The Think.Eat.Save campaign of the Save Food Initiative is created to “galvanize widespread global, regional and national actions, and catalyze more sectors of society to be aware and to act.”
• LA Kitchen recovers healthy, local food from the waste stream to feed the hungry and provide culinary training to unemployed adults, particularly adults exiting prison as well as foster kids aging out of the system.
• A growing number of apps are created to reduce food waste, including Waste No Food, Copia, Zero Percent, Pare Up, Spoiler Alert, FoodKeeper, Food Cowboy and many more.
• Imperfect Produce launches to deliver ugly fruits and vegetables in the Bay Area.
• End Food Waste’s Ugly Foods movement grows into a global community connected by social media platforms.

For city officials, reducing food waste remains a matter of educating residents, providing the necessary infrastructure and creating a consistent messaging strategy that addresses both sides of the issue: preventing food waste and recycling organic matter once there is waste.

Shareable connected with three food waste reduction experts to get their recommendations for city leaders in the effort to help reduce food waste on a municipal level. We spoke with Cassie Bartholomew and Jeff Becerra from Stop Waste in Alameda County, California, which has one of the largest food scrap recycling programs in the country, and Veronica Fincher, Waste Prevention Program Manager at Seattle Public Utilities in Seattle, Washington, where it’s now illegal to throw food and food waste into the trash.

Their responses include great tips to prevent food waste, strategic partnerships for food redistribution and recycling options for food waste once it is generated. Here are their top 27 recommendations.

1. Look to Prevention First

Just as the materials recycling hierarchy places reduction as the best option, ahead of reusing and recycling, food waste has a similar hierarchy. Preventing food waste is a far more desirable option than dealing with it once it’s been created.

Composting is certainly better than letting food waste rot in the landfill. But it’s also important to remember that when food is wasted, all of the resources used to produce the food, including water, are also wasted.

As Fincher explains, at the municipal level they’re trying to reduce the tonnage of materials going to the landfill through both composting and prevention.

“It saves everybody money if we don’t have stuff going into the waste stream period,” she says. “It’s a matter of trying to use resources wisely, conserve, keep rates as low as possible, and help our customers reduce the amount of food waste they throw out.”

The food recovery hierarchy places reduction as the most preferred means of reducing food waste. 

2. Raise Awareness of Food Waste Reduction Strategies

One of the biggest challenges of reducing food waste is breaking people’s habits and automatic behaviors. If someone has thrown away food scraps and uneaten food for decades, composting requires a complete behavioral shift.

The best way to accomplish this shift in thinking is to create awareness regarding the massive amounts of organic waste. The Food Too Good to Waste toolkit is designed to help families both track and reduce their individual food waste. It includes instructions and messaging and marketing materials as well as research conducted on reducing household waste. Numerous cities are already utilizing this toolkit for broader campaigns and food waste challenges, and it can be customized to work with any community or family.

Communities can also include food waste prevention with their municipal messaging, supplying tips and resources to help citizens implement food waste prevention strategies in their own daily lives.

Download our free ebook: “Beyond Waste: Community Solutions to Managing Our Resources”

3. Bring the Problem Home

Food waste prevention requires everyone to do their part. Programs that people can easily implement at home and that involve the entire family bring food waste awareness to people of all ages. Therefore, it’s essential to find and create ways to work with families to minimize food waste.

An estimated one-third of food produced in the world for human consumption is being lost or wasted. 

4. Reduce the Ick Factor

Some people already understand the benefits of composting, while others push back with concerns about cleanliness and rodents. As Becerra points out, compost consists of the same waste that people are already generating, they’re just sending it to a different location.

“When you have a new waste stream like this, people don’t necessarily get it,” he says. “There’s sort of this ick factor that people need to get over.”

Becerra suggests creating simple behavioral changes, such as designating a small pail in the kitchen to collect vegetable trimmings and disposing of food-soiled paper in an outdoor organic bin.

5. Support the Growing Community Composting Movement

Community composting programs use previously wasted resources as local assets and reinvest them back into the same community. Many of these food waste prevention programs are powered by bicycles. City officials can support community composting programs and partner with them to further engage the community.

6. Educate Composters about Prevention

One of the challenges that Stop Waste faces is getting people who are already composting to make a deeper commitment to food waste prevention. Composting is the fifth tier of the EPA’s Food Recovery Hierarchy, so it’s important to educate seasoned composters about the importance of reducing food waste in the first place.

“People may feel like they’re already doing their green duty,” says Bartholomew. “They feel good about [food] recycling. It’s easy to do. It doesn’t take as much thinking and analysis as prevention.”

Through composting, organic waste becomes fresh soil. Photo: USDA (CC-BY)

7. Look at the Big Picture

Because food waste is a complex issue, it’s important to look at the big picture as well as the steps toward ideal solutions. Stop Waste did some strategic planning to assess the whole waste management cycle—how materials are produced, consumed, and ultimately discarded in their area—to create a closed-loop cycle.

“That’s where the prevention and reduction piece came in,” says Bartholomew, “from looking at the EPA’s food recovery hierarchy and trying to develop resources and best practices around reducing waste through prevention, reduction, and donation, then composting the rest.”

8. Work on a Community Level

Raising awareness of food waste prevention and recycling should be part of a top-down messaging effort, including mailers, posters and websites. But the message should also be community based, reaching community members in familiar places. Where are people in the community gathering? What messaging will they respond to? What kind of hands-on education can you provide? These are key questions to ask.

9. Develop Culturally Appropriate Materials

Developing culturally appropriate materials for community members works hand in hand with community outreach efforts.

Determine your target market, then work with community organizations to find the best ways to spread food waste messaging and disseminate resources. Be culturally sensitive. Work closely with neighborhood organizations to determine the most effective strategies for their specific community, then support them in doing the work. A marketing message has far greater impact when it comes from someone within a community.

“We work with community organizations and nonprofits so they can help educate their communities,” says Becerra. “They work in conjunction with us, but in a way that resonates with them. We’ve been visiting nonprofit groups over the last couple of years and have worked closely with them to find the best ways to reach their constituents.”

The resulting projects include a community mural about composting and a door-to-door canvassing campaign.

“It’s a little more of a grassroots community effort,” says Becerra.

Reducing food waste can be a grassroots community effort. Photo: Family O’Abé (CC-BY)

10. Create Food Waste Reduction Requirements for the Garbage Franchise

Cities typically control the garbage franchise, so they can require garbage haulers to pick up the organic stream. That organic stream can be set up to allow for food waste, including food scraps from preparation, uneaten food, and food-soiled paper, such as paper coffee cups and takeout containers.

“If the city is able to site a commercial composting facility, that helps a tremendous amount as well,” Becerra says, “because you’re generating this new waste stream, so you need to have a place fairly close by to process it. The city can assist by making sure the permitting process is not too cumbersome for setting up a commercial composting facility relatively close to the city.”

Becerra stresses that waste haulers need to be on board and invested in the fact that recycling organic matter is worthwhile and not simply meeting the requirements of their agreement.

11. Find the Right Location for Industrial Composting

Neighbors will likely push back against proposed locations for commercial composting facilities because they don’t want it in their neighborhood. Finding an agreeable location will be different for every city, but Becerra advises finding an area that is close to the city, but not necessarily in an urban setting. Many of the Alameda County composting facilities are in fairly remote areas.

The Food Too Good to Waste toolkit is full of resources and strategies to reduce household food waste.

12. Create Diverse Strategies and Messaging

In your communications about reducing food waste, offer a variety of options. Not every food waste prevention technique will work for every family or individual. In a small pilot study in Seattle, residents received a list of possibilities to reduce waste and tested three options over the course of a month.

“We were hoping it would settle on a few key, top strategies,” says Fincher.

However, they discovered a mix of 15 different strategies that worked for different people.

“It’s so individual,” Fincher explains. “We recognized that we need to allow for a lot of flexibility in our messaging so people can pick what’s going to work for them.”

13. Leverage Waste Management Funding to Raise Prevention Awareness

Cities may have robust budgets and resources available for food scrap recycling, but fewer resources available for food waste prevention. Bartholomew advises leveraging the recycling budget to raise awareness about food waste prevention.

“When rolling out a new recycling program, for example,” she says, “see if you can pair the messaging to use this as an opportunity to teach people how to reduce the amount of food waste they’re generating in the first place, then compost the rest.” She adds, “It’s a complex message, and you’re teaching multiple behaviors. Clearly there’s an opportunity to leverage that funding that already exists for outreach by adding in the prevention messaging.”

14. Create Food Waste Challenges

Building on the resources from the Food Too Good to Waste toolkit, you can create food waste challenges in households, neighborhoods, and cities to bring awareness to the issue of food waste. Rally community members around the cause and introduce a competition where people can challenge themselves and each other.

15. Utilize the UK’s Love Food Hate Waste Resources

Love Food Hate Waste is a project of the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP). Their website offers a number of resources to reduce food waste, including an app to help people waste less and save money, a perfect portion tool, a two-week meal planner, and hints and tips about date labels, freezing food, storing food, and more.

To help reduce food waste, set goals for yourself and your household. Photo: Madhan Karthikeyan (CC-BY)

16. Create Partnerships

Partnerships play an important role in solving food waste at a grassroots level.

“If communities are going to be successful,” says Becerra, “multiple parties need to be on board. Working together is critical to making it happen, whether it’s food waste prevention or food scrap recycling.”

Potential partners include industrial kitchens, restaurants, school cafeterias, supermarkets, local community organizations and nonprofits. To facilitate these partnerships, there’s a growing need for companies to create software and increase efficiency.

Food recovery—taking surplus food from one business and delivering it to organizations working to curb hunger—also requires key partnerships.

In Orange County, California, they found that restaurants didn’t understand the Good Samaritan Act, which protects businesses from criminal and civil liability when they donate food to nonprofit organizations. Concerns about liability had been preventing restaurants from donating food.

To educate restaurant owners, local health inspectors, who regularly visit the restaurants, were trained to discuss how to safely donate excess food.

The county then partnered with Yellow Cab and local 7-11 stores: Yellow Cab picks up the food during off-hours and takes it to the convenience stores to refrigerate overnight until pick up.

“These are innovations that are specific to that community,” says Bartholomew, “and they took a handful of partners to really think through and come up with.”

Food rotting in landfills produces methane, a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than CO². Photo by Taz (CC-BY)

17. Sell or Donate the Compost

Compost can be sold, donated to local schools and organizations, or used for public projects like parks and gardens.

“One thing you can do,” says Becerra, “is have free compost giveaways. It’s a way to show residents, who are essentially the customers, that their work is creating a useful product, and not just disappearing.”

One school district in Alameda County has language built into the city’s franchise agreement to donate a percentage of the finished compost to the school district for school gardens. One of the haulers also has a donation program where they donate directly to community groups and school groups that can promote the use of local compost.

18. Do a Local Study

Gathering sample data can help determine next steps toward sustainable consumption in cities. Officials in Seattle conducted a small food waste study of 119 households. They asked each household to weigh their organic waste to help determine how much of their total waste stream was organic matter.

“That gave us some data that we didn’t have from any other source,” says Fincher. “It showed that a third of our food waste is edible food waste and that reducing it is actually something that is worthwhile.”

Food waste occurs at every stage of the food cycle, from producers down to consumers. Photo: s pants (CC-BY)

19. Create and Support Food Recovery Programs

Food waste recovery is an important, socially responsible aspect of reducing food waste. Businesses may be inclined to adopt food waste recovery practices, since production is unaffected.  Encourage local stores and restaurants to join existing food recovery programs or to create a new program.

20. Create and Support Food Redistribution Tech Tools

Preventing food waste requires smart systems. Develop and use local tech platforms, such as online portals or mapping platforms, to connect those with surplus food to those who need food. In Seattle, for example, 200 different agencies pick up and redistribute food, but, as Fincher explains, “There are a lot of other generators and people who need the food.”

21. Celebrate Wins and Showcase Businesses Taking a Leadership Role

One of the best ways to get businesses and organizations on board with food waste reduction is to spotlight the ones that are already doing it well. This inspires and encourages other enterprises to find ways to participate.

“We’re always trying to share success stories and best practices,” says Bartholomew, “by highlighting businesses that are doing the right thing or highlighting how they overcame some barriers.”

22. Set Food Waste Reduction Goals

In keeping with the nationwide goal to reduce 50 percent of food waste by 2030, city officials can create local goals to keep leaders and residents on track.

“By setting some sort of goal, tracking how much pre-consumer food waste is being generated, then categorizing why it’s being generated and whether that food gets composted or goes to the landfill,” says Bartholomew, “we can see where that food waste is generated and where it goes.”

Stop Waste will be gathering data for the next few years to yield better insight into the county’s larger waste generators. Once they’ve pinpointed the largest problems, they can work to reduce food waste in those areas.

23. Include Food Scrap Pickup in Mandatory Recycling Programs

Alameda County has a mandatory recycling program for businesses that includes organics collection. Recycling Rules Alameda County states the rules and gives information on both the expectations and best practices.

97 percent of food waste ends up in landfills. Photo: Alan Levine (CC-BY)

24. Support Food Waste Reduction Legislation

There’s an increasing amount of legislation addressing food waste reduction—particularly regarding date labeling. Advocates aim to create a standard labeling system to help reduce food waste. The NRDC report The Dating Game: How Confusing Food Date Labels Lead to Food Waste in America is a “first-of-its-kind legal analysis of federal and state laws related to date labels across all 50 states.” The report presents recommendations for a new labeling system.

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree from Maine recently introduced the Food Recovery Act. The bill is aimed at reducing the amount of food wasted each year in the United States and includes nearly two dozen provisions to reduce food waste.

Supporting legislation around food waste issues is critical for city leaders working to prevent food waste.

25. Provide Food Waste Awareness Outreach in Schools

As Bartholomew explains, it’s easier to instill positive waste reduction behaviors in children than to change existing behaviors in adults. To facilitate this behavior change, city leaders can create and support programs designed specifically for local schools and youth organizations.

Organizers should work with an existing recycling coordinator or find the resources to integrate food waste education into existing programs. To create consistency, Bartholomew recommends setting up a consistent infrastructure, so kids have the same recycling bins at school that they have at home.

Stop Waste’s Student Action Project visits 5th grade and middle school classrooms to train teachers about recycling and food waste. Their team also helps families with the Food Too Good to Waste program, which works with them for four to six weeks. Bartholomew finds the citizen-science aspect to be particularly effective because students are bringing the same message home to their families.

26. Get Other Officials On Board

The best way to get other officials on board with a food waste reduction program is to show them projects that are successful in other cities.

“City officials have to deal with many of the same issues,” says Becerra. “It’s helpful for elected officials to know that it is possible to do these things.” He adds, “Sometimes it takes a while for people to understand that this can be done fairly easily and that it is important.”

27. Connect with Successful Food Waste Reduction Programs

Are you ready to get started on a food waste reduction strategy? The Stop Waste team is available to advise and share its best practices. Services and programs are well established in Alameda County, and the Stop Waste team stresses that they can help connect the dots for other leaders, too.

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This article was originally published on April 11, 2016

Follow @CatJohnson on Twitter

The post How to prevent food waste: 27 tips for community leaders appeared first on Shareable.

But there is a way to reestablish balanced ecosystems by a process called depaving: the act of removing pavement and freeing up the soil below. Depave, a Portland-based nonprofit promoting the “transformation of over-paved places,” put together a guide to help people depave in their communities.

As How to Depave: The Guide to Freeing Your Soil states, “The removal of impervious pavements will reduce stormwater pollution and increase the amount of land available for habitat restoration, urban farming, trees, native vegetation, and beauty, thus providing us with greater connections to the natural world.”

Here are Depave’s key points to depaving.

Preparation

Before you start tearing pavement up, do some research. Things to consider include how water interacts with the site, what drainage currently exists, and where the downspouts from existing buildings send water. There may be opportunities to disconnect downspouts from sewer lines and utilize the newly-depaved area for on-site infiltration.

Depave suggests contacting your local city or county for guidance on stormwater retrofit information and design. You’ll need to find out how removing pavement will affect adjacent areas. For a first-time depaving project, start with a small lot of 500 square feet or less. The guide also suggests that you discuss the project with the property owner and get written approval.

1. Determine site history and soil health

Before you depave, determine the condition of the underlying soil. Start by researching the site’s history. You can do this at your local library or assessor’s office or by viewing land deeds.

Lead is a common urban soil contaminant you may find, from lead paint, older construction, and older houses. Depave recommends testing for lead, cadmium, hydrocarbons, arsenic, and organochlorine pesticides if the post-depave plan includes growing food.

If you find these contaminants, Depave discourages removing pavement as the contamination is capped and is not causing any severe negative environmental or health impacts. “Unless there is a cleanup plan in place,” they write, “removing the pavement may do more harm than good.”

Another test to run is an infiltration test. This will help determine if the soil is suitable for certain types of stormwater management systems. This test measures how quickly water can soak in and flow through the soil and can be easily performed. The How to Depave appendices provide detailed step-by-step instructions for testing soil.

2. Develop a site plan

Once you’ve determined the site conditions, create a plan for improving the space. As Depave explains, “A well executed depaving can help revitalize a neighborhood space with features that can: manage stormwater, provide habitat diversity for urban wildlife, reduce the urban heat island effect, and/or provide garden space for community members.”

Depaved sites can also be used as stormwater management devices. Common ways to do this include:

• Vegetated bioswales, which slow runoff
• Rain gardens, which store runoff until it can be infiltrated into the ground
• Planters, including infiltration planters, contained planters, and flow-through planters, which beautify the site and slow runoff
• Trees and naturescaping with evergreen trees and native plants, which also beautify the site and slow runoff
• Learning gardens for people to experience growing food and plants in an educational setting
• Community food gardens and orchards. These can have raised beds for soils with low permeability or if there is any possible soil contamination, and individual garden plots to provide garden space for many people and build community around the garden

3. Seek approval for your plan

Before depaving, you’ll also need a detailed drawing of the site, including any proposed changes. Your city may require this, which will help determine what materials will be needed, the budget, and how the project will look when it is complete. You may also need permits from various city departments.

From the Depave guide: “Your site plan should clearly depict: where you propose to depave, a scale, a north arrow, elevation points and water flow across the site, stormwater drains, important project notes, as well as existing and proposed structures and trees. These drawings do not need to be polished documents, but do need to be drawn to scale and thoroughly detail the elements of your proposal.”

Reach out to the community when creating your plan. You may find design professionals who can help create and visualize your design for a future green space.

4. Create a plan for recycling the pavement

When it comes to depaving, you’ll need to determine what surface material you’ll be removing and what you’ll do with it once you’ve removed it. Concrete can be repurposed and reused to construct walkways, flower beds, fire pits, retaining walls, and other outdoor structures. Local pavement processing companies can recycle asphalt into a crushed rock aggregate used in construction projects.

5. Prepare the pavement

Before removing concrete, you’ll need to break it up with a jackhammer. Asphalt must be cut with a walk-behind saw to cut it into slabs, which can be removed by hand. Before you depave, have a 10-yard dumpster delivered to your site to collect materials.

Once the pavement is cut and broken up, you’ll need hand tools to remove the pieces one-by-one. Tools and supplies needed include:

• Pry bar
• Pick axe
• Sledgehammer
• Wheelbarrow
• Hand truck
• Gloves
• Closed-toe shoes and long pants
• Eye protection
• Ear protection
• Dust mask

Depaving techniques

Now comes the actual removal of the pavement. If it was cut into squares, start with a pickaxe or pry bar. You can cut and remove small triangles at the corners of a few squares to give yourself places to start.

Start at a corner and use a pry bar to get under the slab. Leverage the slab with the pry bar on one end and have someone do the same on the other. This should be enough to get the heavy slab off the ground.

Have at least two people lift the slab into a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow will be very heavy and can easily tip over, so Depave cautions against overfilling it.

Now you need to get the asphalt from the wheelbarrow to the dumpster. There are two ways to do this:

1. Ramp it: You can either use a big piece of plywood or rent a metal ramp at any local tool rental location
2. Throw it: Carefully toss smaller pieces over the edge

Make depaving a community event

Depaving is not easy work, but there are great payoffs. Make it a celebration for the whole community. Here are tips to create a fun and effective depaving event:

• Promote the event to make sure you get plenty of volunteers
• Provide food and drinks
• Make sure there is plenty of shade for rest breaks
• Prepare leaders ahead of time with the right safety procedures
• Provide volunteers with gloves, glasses, and dust masks
• Add other festivities and music
• Try hosting your event in conjunction with other neighborhood activities

Post-depaving

Once you remove the pavement, there’s typically four to six inches of gravel. There are two ways to remove the gravel:

1. With small sites, the gravel can easily be shoveled out of the newly depaved area. Gravel can be reused to create walkways through gardens, fill potholes, create drainage areas, and more
2. For larger sites, the gravel can be removed using heavy machinery. You can hire a local contractor to do this work, or rent a small backhoe or bobcat from a heavy equipment facility and do it yourself.

If kept separate from other materials, gravel can be hauled away in a dropbox and recycled at a local reuse facility.

1. Restore the soil

Soil restoration is an important part of depaving, as pavement compacts soil and prevents it from being vital. The Depave guide explains,“The biggest problem caused by heavy impervious surfaces is soil compaction. The weight of the pavement crushes macropores—the small spaces between the soil aggregate—preventing water, air, and roots from moving through the soil.”

To break up the compacted soil at small sites, use a spading fork or pickaxe. For larger sites, you’ll want farm implements such as a deep-ripper or chisel plow.

Once the soil is broken up, mix in organic matter such as compost or a three-way blended soil mix to help create a healthier soil profile and bring your site back to life.

2. Landscape

From the Depave guide: “Now for the fun part! Using your site plan and planting plan as a guide, your team can begin to bring the site to life. While depaving is a great summer activity, plants shouldn’t go into the ground until fall, when the temperature is cooler. Determine the best time of year to begin planting in your area to ensure the highest possible survival rate for the plants. Organize volunteer work parties to space out the work over several days and many hands.”

For more information on depaving, see How to Depave: the Guide to Freeing Your Soil, by Depave.

This article was originally published on April 15, 2015, and was most recently updated on August 13, 2024.

Check out these related articles:

• Let’s make dirt: 5 community composting resources you can start using today
• How to create a Resilient Space in your neighborhood
• COVID-19 pandemic brings new growth to Montreal’s urban gardens

The post How to free the soil by depaving appeared first on Shareable.

As Rebecca Newburn, founder and co-coordinator of the Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library explains, seed swaps are fun ways to collect seeds that are more climate resilient and adapted to local soils than commercial seeds, They’re also great community events, provide an opportunity to exchange gardening tips and meet other gardeners, and you can learn what grows well in your area — particularly if you have weather extremes of lots of microclimates.

To host a seed swap, you’ll need a space, tables, volunteers, seeds to share, a few supplies, signage, fliers and other communication materials, and a group of enthusiastic seed sharers. The following tips are taken from a seed swap guide created by the Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library.

Before the Event

Gather Volunteers

For a successful seed swap, you’ll need a team of volunteers to help with:

• Creating and distributing fliers and information about the event.
  • Note: Be sure to include bilingual volunteers and make flyers and signs in both English and Spanish to encourage more people to participate.
• Reaching out to media contacts.
• Connecting with partners and aligned organizations.
• Making signs for use at the event.
• Setting up tables and signage at the event.
• Staffing tables and directing people at the swap.
• Helping with cleanup after the event.

Newburn explains that not all the volunteers need to be seed experts, as a lot of the work is moving tables and putting seeds on tables. You’ll want a few experts on-hand, however, to teach people about saving seeds and offer gardening tips.

Collect Seeds to Share

• If your swap is affiliated with a seed library, you may have enough seeds to get started. 
• If not: reach out to gardening associations, master gardeners, local seed savers, horticulture departments, and/or botanical gardens to request seed donations.

Promote the Event

Promoting your seed swap is essential. The following promotional tools will get you started, but tap into any resources your community may have:

• Posters
• Small fliers and handbills
• Media: Get in touch as soon as you have confirmed a date and place for your seed swap. 
  • local television
  • Radio
  • Blogs
  • Newspapers
    • Note: media outlets generally need plenty of advance notice to schedule coverage of events of this type. 
• Neighborhood councils and community organizations
• Social media: Start promoting the event as soon as it’s confirmed and increase your social media campaign as you get closer to the event. 
  • Ask partners and aligned organizations and businesses to promote the event through their social media channels as well.
• Newsletter and email

Swap Signage

At the event, you’ll need signs for:

• Introducing people to the seed swap.
• Detailing which plants are good for new gardeners and which are for more advanced gardeners.
• Information on your local seed library (if there is one).
• Instructions on taking and sharing seeds.
• A guide to local planting times.
• The Fedco seed saving chart.
• Recommendations on how many seeds to take for the amount of plants you want to end up with.
• And any other information you’d like to share.

At their seed swaps, Richmond Grows color codes the seed envelopes. Super easy seeds have green labels, easy is blue, and difficult is yellow. “Borrower Beware” signs, denoting expert-level plants, are orange.

Be sure to have volunteers who can help new gardeners and seed sharers get started.

Event Supplies and Materials

• Letter-sized envelopes can be used as seed packets. 
• Seal and tape the ends and cut them in half to create packets people can use to carry seeds home. 
• You may be able to get business envelopes donated from companies who are going out of business or changing addresses, or from printer errors.
• Poster paper is great for making signs for wayfinding and swap instructions.
• If your swap is associated with a seed library or organization, bring a rubber stamp with library information and stamp pad. That way you can stamp seed packets with information.
• Bring masking tape for hanging posters.
• Bring lots of pencils for tables. 
  • Richmond Grows suggests taping artificial flowers on the ends to identify them as belonging to the swap and keep them from disappearing.

• Bring staplers or tape for people to seal their seed envelopes.

Brochures/Forms

• Create a “How to Save Seeds” brochure in English [doc] and Spanish [doc] to hand out so people can bring seeds from their harvest to the next swap. 
• Richmond Grows invites seed swap hosts to put their own contact info on their brochures, but please leave the URL directing people to Richmond Grows.
• Find more seed saving and seed sharing resources in the guide, Free the Seeds! 9 Ways to Power Up the Seed Movement.
• If your seed swap is in conjunction with a seed library or community organization, bring membership forms or an email signup list to participants’ contact information so you can alert them about future events.

Collecting Seeds

In addition to giving out seeds, you’ll also be collecting seeds. Here are some tips for keeping collected seeds organized:

• Use pre-stamped envelopes for seed donations, with labels in English and Spanish.
• Use rubber bands to organize seed packets at the end of the event (for instance, collect all tomato seeds together).
• Bring bags or boxes to put seeds in at the end of the event.
• At each table, note whether the seeds are super easy, easy, or hard. 
• Create a system for noting which seeds are for edible, non-edible, medicinal and cooking herbs, and hybrids. 
  • With hybrid seeds, be sure to note that hybrids will not produce plants like their parents and that seeds should not be saved for the library. (Richmond Grows does this by placing a yellow dot sticker on hybrid seed packets.)

At the Event

Orientation

Do a mini-orientation to the library and seed swap before people are allowed to take any seeds. This should take about 10 minutes. Repeat the orientation throughout the event.

Give Thanks

Newburn suggests that, if it’s appropriate for your community, a blessing or moment of gratitude for the seeds and the community is “a lovely way to start a swap.”

Volunteers

Volunteers should be available to answer questions and direct people to the various tables at the swap. Have people on table duty who can answer questions. Have name tags for volunteers with identifiers such as “seed saver” or “ask me about the seed library.”

Encourage First-Timers to Take Seeds

• Make people feel welcome even if they don’t have any seeds to share yet. 
  • The Bay Area Seed Interchange in Berkeley (BASIL) asks people to bring seed to share and a potluck dish or $10, but no one is turned away for lack of funds or seeds.

• Encourage people to take what they intend to grow and label everything so when they bring back seeds, it’s clear what they are. 
  • Also, encourage people to learn about saving seeds — in particular, the super easy seeds such as tomatoes, beans, peas and lettuce. This can be facilitated with brochures and volunteers.
• If your seed swap is affiliated with a seed library, give regular tours of the library throughout the event.

Tables

• At the registration table you’ll greet and register people, collect contact information, and direct them to the donations tables. 
• On donation tables, you’ll need:
  • Seed envelopes
  • Pencils
  • Plant indices
  • A sign explaining how to fill the envelope form in
  • A sign stating what seeds are there and the difficulty level and recommendations of how many seeds to take
  • Tape or stapler
  • A collection box with a sign that says, “Donations for Seed Library.” 
  • Be sure to color code, or otherwise indicate, which plants are easy to grow and which require more advanced care.
• Have volunteers at the table to answer questions and explain procedures.

Promote Seed Saving

Make sure folks understand that this is not just a taking event, and that the intention of the swap includes creating local resilience around food and seeds. 

Things you can do to promote this:

• Start the swap by explaining that seeds are labeled by seed-saving level, and that you are encouraging everyone to start with the super easy plants.
• Have plenty of super easy seed-saving brochures available.
• Have people who are experienced seed savers wear a badge that says “Ask me about seed saving.”
• Let folks know that there are people who can answer questions about seed saving.
• If you have a seed lending library, have folks who volunteer at the library wear badges too, so folks can learn about the library.
• Have a class, at or before the swap, about seed saving.
• Every 20-30 minutes remind folks about the super easy plants and encourage them to ask someone with a badge about seed saving.
• If you have a seed library in the same building, give tours of it at regular intervals throughout your swap.

Clean Up

Make sure volunteers stick around to help clean up, take notes on what you can do to improve the event for next time, and bundle remaining seeds to go to your local seed library.

Helpful Tips From Richmond Grows

• Make sure you have lots of envelopes for folks to write info on. Richmond Grows has a stamp they use to pre-stamp hundreds of envelopes before the event to encourage people to write quality information on the seeds they take with them.
• If you have a web presence, or if you’re emailing folks about the event, you may also want to have them be able to download labels so they can bring in well-labeled seeds to share.
• Have fun!

To learn more about hosting a seed swap, see Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library’s seed swap guide.

This guide was originally published on April 13, 2014 and was updated on April 29, 2024.

The post How to host a seed swap appeared first on Shareable.

Around the world, there are thousands of bike kitchens—also known as bike churches, bike collectives, and bike coops—with more popping up all the time (see maps here). For those interested in starting a bike kitchen in your town, we’ve rounded up the essentials of getting started, from finding the right space and volunteers to raising money, getting the word out, defining community guidelines, and creating a space that is accessible and welcoming to all.

1. Find the right space

First things first, your bike kitchen needs a home. It doesn’t have to be fancy and it doesn’t have to be huge, but you’ll need enough space for some essential tools and for people to be able to comfortably work on their bikes. Depending on the kitchen’s offerings, you may also need space to store bike frames, spare parts, and ready-to-go bikes, but this is not necessary, especially when you’re getting started.

Catherine Hartzell, co-founder of the San Francisco (SF) Bike Kitchen, advises trying to find a rent-free or multi-purpose space.

“The bike kitchen will not be used all the time,” she says, “so sharing the space with another organization could work well. Basements of churches or other nonprofits are good places to start looking.”

If you can share another organization’s space, ideally rent-free, this minimizes expenses dramatically. Some other possible options include community centers, existing bike organization spaces, community tool sheds, or lending libraries.

Low-cost and mobile models

If you’re unable to find a space, or if you don’t want to be locked into a particular location, you can always create a mobile bike kitchen. This poses some interesting challenges in terms of hauling tools and supplies around, and letting people know where you’ll be, but using this pop-up style, you can just roll into different neighborhoods and set up, increasing the visibility of the kitchen and extending its reach into the community. The reduced overhead of not having a permanent space also enables you to create more programs and initiatives for getting bikes into the community.

Common Cycle, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, began in 2010 as a pop-up, mobile bike kitchen that made regular appearances at farmers markets and on campuses. Then, in 2018 they opened up a permanent community space just outside downtown Ann Arbor. Don’t rule out any potential possibilities when looking for a space, and be open to utilizing resources you may already have. For example, the Bozeman Bike Kitchen in Bozeman, Montana started in the founder’s garage, moved to a “chicken coop on school district property”, and now permanently resides in a building in an industrial park.

2. Tools

At the core of every bike kitchen is a collection of shared tools. To start building your collection of tools, ask bike shops and community members for donations, or do some initial fundraising events or campaigns to get enough tools to open the kitchen. The wish list of tools that would be nice to have in a bike kitchen is endless, but some of the essentials are: a wheel truing stand; a wide variety of wrenches; bearings; chain lube; grease; and clean-up supplies. See the bikecollectives.org wiki for a detailed list of necessary shop tools.

As you start to purchase tools, contact shops and dealers to get wholesale prices. Aim to get quality items that will last, because many hands will be using them.

On a related note, take time to lay out how you want the bike kitchen organized, as this will contribute to how comfortable people feel working in the space and how efficiently it runs. Think about the best workflow, most common repairs, etc.

3. Volunteers and staffing

Perhaps the most valuable asset your bike kitchen can have is a committed team of volunteers. It’s great if there’s money for paid staff, but most bike kitchens are volunteer-powered. As Hartzell points out, committed volunteers are essential, “You need people who want to commit to being there at least once a week.”

She adds that it’s nice to reward volunteers with parties, food, and social events. An additional perk for volunteers is being able to buy items at wholesale prices from distributors.

Before launching the bike kitchen, rally around a few committed people who understand the vision for the space. From there, interested volunteers will find you through word of mouth and by coming into the kitchen.

Keep communication open and expectations for staff and volunteers clear. A great way to do this is to create a volunteer handbook that lays out the vision, rules, and requirements of the organization. Rules may include: don’t take tools out of the shop; no drugs or alcohol in the shop; safety first; respect the space; respect the tools; respect each other; and have a senior member check work.

Numerous bike collectives, including the SLC Bicycle Collective, the Des Moines Bike Collective, Free Ride Pittsburgh, and the Fort Collins Bike Co-op have shared their handbooks so you can see how other organizations handle their guidelines. The main thing is to communicate expectations clearly to volunteers and lay out how rules are enforced. 

You will also want to have regular meetings to address issues that come up, brainstorm ways to support, strengthen, and grow the kitchen, and do community-building. Work parties, where people can socialize and get to know each other, are a good idea as well. Hartzell stresses the importance of having both meetings and social events.

“Have monthly staff meetings so everyone knows each other,” she says. “Provide time to discuss issues, but also time to socialize and eat food,” which she points out, should be paid for by the bike kitchen.

4. Organizational models and governance

What’s the organizational vision for your bike kitchen? Is it a cooperative? Is it a collective? Is it run by one or two people with an extended team of volunteers? Decide on your model, then research best practices.

Shareable’s guide on starting a worker co-op can help you get started with the creation of a coop. The Sustainable Economies Law Center is a great resource for all things cooperative, including their Think Outside the Boss manual for creating a cooperative.

Here are the seven principles that guide cooperatives around the world:

1. Voluntary and Open Membership
2. Democratic Member Control
3. Member Economic Participation
4. Autonomy and Independence
5. Education, Training, and Information
6. Cooperation among Cooperatives
7. Concern for Community

A collective is a group of people who share a common interest and/or vision. They differ from worker cooperatives as they are not necessarily focused on economic benefit. When you’re starting out, this may be a good model for your bike kitchen, but you can use cooperative principles and tools, such as democratic decision-making and concern for community as a guide for creating a healthy community.

Thinking about becoming a nonprofit? Here are some pros and cons.

Legalities

Do you need a business permit? Mission statement? These are things to research before you get started. The answer to these questions will depend on the size of the project, the vision for it, and whether you’re working under an already established organization. Although not particularly fun, getting these things taken care of early will save you headaches down the road.

Be sure to get liability insurance for the kitchen. If someone gets hurt in the shop or on one of the bikes and decides to sue, it could be the end of the kitchen or worse. Check out the Bike Collective wiki’s guide to bike kitchen insurance and why you should have it.

Challenges

As with any organization, challenges will arise. They may be rooted in finances, difficult personalities, lack of clear communication, varied expectations of what the bike kitchen is, commitment levels, theft, laziness, or a hundred different things. The key here is to catch these challenging situations before they get blown out of proportion. An ounce of prevention…and all that.

Regular meetings give people an opportunity to express grievances and get things out in the open. Beware, however, of the unending meeting. These are frustrating and will drive people away quickly. If something needs to be taken from a meeting to a more personal level, do so. 

If the issue remains after you’ve exhausted your communication skills and strategies, consider bringing in a mediator or unbiased third party to help resolve things. Many issues, however, will just need to be dealt with as they arise. As Hartzell says, “I think these are just things you will learn to deal with through experience.”

5. Funding

Like most things, the bike kitchen will need money. You can keep this need relatively small, or you may have a big vision that requires a steady flow of cash. Either way, funding the bike kitchen is one of the first things you’ll need to address. Fortunately, bike kitchens are one of the more financially sustainable sharing projects because they have a ready market. They offer the community a needed service that is expensive through conventional counterparts, such as service at bike shops or buying all the necessary tools oneself.

Funding will likely come from a variety of sources including community fundraising, support from local bicycle businesses, organizations and advocacy groups, bike kitchen memberships, and bike sales. Hartzell advises getting 501(c)(3) status, or getting another nonprofit to sponsor the kitchen.

If membership dues are part of your bike kitchen model, consider offering people an opportunity to volunteer in exchange for membership, so those who can’t afford membership aren’t excluded.

One common way to sustain a bike kitchen is to sell bikes and parts. If you plan to finance the kitchen this way, keep in mind that the goal is not to become a bike shop, but to be a community resource where people can pick up affordable bikes. Many bike kitchens sell affordable used parts and basic new parts.

Other funding sources can be capital campaigns including: microloans; grants; in-kind donations; local, state or federal support; crowdfunding; or large fundraising events with your membership. The SF Bike Kitchen has hosted a large fundraising event called Tour de Cupcake, where they ride to different locations and eat cupcakes. This event filled up well in advance and raised thousands each year for operations costs. You can also generate funds through the kitchen with classes, membership fees, shop rentals, and paid repairs.

For reference, here’s a rundown of the SF Bike Kitchen’s monthly expenses from its third year:

• Tools – $200
• Consumables – $100
• Volunteer Appreciation – $100
• Liability Insurance – $100
• Space – $1450
• TOTAL – $1950

Donations

Donations of bikes, tools, and parts can come from a variety of sources including community donations, bike shops, bicycle organizations, unclaimed bikes that local police are holding, city recycling, and dumps. Connect with these organizations to see what’s available in your area.

Drives

You can also host bike drives and tool drives to encourage the community at large to finally take that bike or those tools that have been sitting untouched in the garage for years, and pass them on to someone who can use them. Drives are also a good way to spread the word about the bike kitchen, clarify the vision for the project, do some outreach, and build community around the project.

Keeping used parts and bikes in circulation is an important aspect of a bike kitchen. Keeping usable resources out of landfills by repairing and reusing them should be a core part of your kitchen’s mission.

6. Programs for underserved communities

A bike kitchen, at its best, is an open, community-driven enterprise that is accessible and welcoming to all. This might just be a space that communicates that it is safe and open to all. Or, you may choose to have your bike kitchen focused on a particular community. 

For example, FenderBender in Detroit operates as “a women-, queer-, and trans-centered bicycle workspace, rooted in justice principles.” ColectiVelo in Oakland is an example of a no-cash, bilingual, community bike kitchen/collaborative made up of people from diverse backgrounds.

The idea behind these spaces is to create an environment where marginalized or underserved people feel welcome and empowered to learn about cycling, fix their bikes, and meet like-minded people. Many bike kitchens make a point of openly inviting and welcoming underserved and marginalized people into the space. The importance is that people who may be used to feeling unwelcome can find a community and cycling resources.

As ColectiVelo founder Morgan Kanninen put it, “A focus on marginalized people’s experiences can allow you to reduce barriers to the important services and resources that collectives provide.”

“Once you have that kind of inclusiveness,” she says, “it becomes possible for people to develop human connections in meaningful ways despite class, color, and other social divides.”

Kanninen stresses that once underserved people have shown an interest in your bike kitchen, be sure to draw them into the community.

“Just because people come to the shop doesn’t mean they’ll keep coming,” she says, “much less take on leadership that keeps it a vibrant, creative, healthy space for community.”

To be inclusive, make sure that the bike kitchen’s volunteers and staff represent the diversity you’d like to see in your community. Once the kitchen is up and running, have themed days, evenings, or events that cater to the specific needs, concerns, and interests of marginalized communities. For example, many bike kitchens have a femme, queer, and trans night because of the inherent gender discrepancies in access to knowledge of mechanics. This container gives them an opportunity to ask questions openly and also a place where they are more likely to feel safe in general.

Earn-a-bike program

One program you’ll want to consider offering is earn-a-bike, a program through which those who can’t afford to buy a bike can earn one by volunteering in the shop. You can modify the program to fit your particular needs. The bikecollectives.org wiki has a resource to get you started.

7. Getting the word out

Once everything is in place, it’s time to tell the community about the bike kitchen. Here’s where creativity, your network, your hustle, and any artistic talents the community may possess come into play. To get the word out, you’ll need to get information about the bike kitchen in front of people. Start with a web presence, an email address, and social media accounts. You can set up a free blog using a content management platform like WordPress. You can also talk to local bike advocacy groups, distribute fliers, create a newsletter, and ask friends and supporters to tell their networks. But no need to stop there.

Get creative. Is there a local band whose members are cycling enthusiasts? Hit them up to mention the bike kitchen. Is there a great poster artist among your group of friends? A nicely done poster will hang for longer, on a wider variety of walls, than a photocopied, black and white flier. Is there a community wiki or bulletin board for your town? List the bike kitchen with these types of things. Dip into existing resources and connections that the community already has and be specific with your ask. Do you want people to come into the space? Do you want people to donate time, bikes, or tools to the kitchen? Do you want people to come get a free bike? Let them know.

Bringing awareness to the bike kitchen is an ongoing job. Is there a volunteer or community member who is particularly adept at marketing, social media, press, etc? Make them your go-to PR person. Communicate the importance of keeping up on community outreach and communication. Make sure everyone knows that exciting news, interesting community tidbits, and great photos should be forwarded to this person so they can share them.

8. Building community

Now that the kitchen is set up, word is out, and your local cycling scene is one resource richer, it’s time to build and strengthen the community. A great way to do this is by hosting fun events to bring people together, create buzz, raise money, get media attention, create new connections, and put the new community into action.

Kanninen says that community-building can take many forms and requires both personal and organizational work.

“It’s about relationship-building between organizations and developing the identity of your group in the context of the populations it serves,” she says. “Be participatory and transparent in the way the shop is run, and allow the kitchen to seek bigger goals than just getting bikes fixed.” She continues, “Develop partnerships with those other projects in the community that the kitchen sees as admirable and good at community building.”

Here are a few community-building ideas: 

• host a concert in the space
• organize a group ride (themed or otherwise)
• set up skillshares for people to share what they know
• invite local authors, activists, city leaders, etc., into the space to talk about what they’re up to and how the cycling community can help
• throw a potluck
• plan a neighborhood beautification project
• have an art or design contest to create materials and merchandise for the space.

These are general ideas to get the ball rolling, but the most successful ideas are the ones best suited to your space, so dial into those events that cater to the unique needs and desires of the local community.

Hartzell explains that community-building has to come from the community already involved in the bike kitchen. People will invest time in organizing events they care about, like the Tour de Cupcake. SF Bike Kitchen also provides food to its volunteers on shifts, to get them to stick around and make friends.

Big picture

Both in the creation stage and the up-and-running stage, keep the mission for your bike kitchen visible and known to all who participate. This will help guide your choices and inform the community of exactly what your priorities are. And have fun! After all, you’re creating a valuable resource to get bikes into the community. “I like organizations like the bike kitchen,” says Hartzell, “because they empower people to be self-sufficient. I like when people learn that they have the power to easily solve a problem that seems insurmountable.” She continues, “I like the community that builds around something like the bike kitchen, and the culture that develops around a volunteer-run organization.”

She adds that, through collaboration, embracing diversity, and playing to people’s strengths, a bike kitchen can shine. “People have different motivations for being involved, and they contribute different things and to different extents, and somehow it all works out.”

Additional resources

• Bike Collective Network is a hub for not-for-profit bicycle projects to connect and share knowledge
• Bike Collectives Wiki
• View the Bike Collective’s Think Tank Archives

This article was originally published on November 18, 2014 and was significantly updated by Jennifer Foley on March 13, 2024.

The post How to start a bike kitchen appeared first on Shareable.

Here’s a fun fact: Abraham Lincoln didn’t go to law school. He independently studied the law, registered with the Sangamon County Court in Illinois, and passed an oral examination by a panel of attorneys. He was then given his license to practice law. More recently, Kim Kardashian was able to take and pass the bar exam without attending one day of law school as well.

In four states, you can still take this non-law-school route to becoming a lawyer. Vermont, Washington, California, and Virginia all allow people to become lawyers by “reading the law,” which, simply put, means studying and apprenticing in the office of a practicing attorney or judge. Currently, New York requires at least one year of law school experience, plus an apprenticeship program, and five more states (Oregon, Georgia, North Dakota,  Maine, and Indiana) are considering adding apprenticeship paths as well.

The Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) has been a leader in educating people about legal apprenticeships. Their Movement Lawyering page offers a big-picture glimpse into the legal apprenticeship movement with information, resources, advice, and first-hand accounts from both supervising attorneys and apprentices.

Using information found on SELC’s website, as well as interviews with legal apprentices and SELC’s co-founder Janelle Orsi, Shareable created the following how-to for becoming a lawyer without going to law school. Rules and requirements vary from state to state, so check your local law, but here are some practical tips, best practices, and virtual cheers of encouragement.

Why Do It

There are numerous benefits to taking the legal apprenticeship route to becoming a lawyer. They include: making becoming a lawyer more accessible to a wider demographic of people; gaining years of legal practice prior to becoming a lawyer; avoiding law school debt, which can run hundreds of thousands of dollars; learning at a pace and style that works for you; studying in the area where you want to practice law; and building a network of future clients, mentors, colleagues, and legal professionals.

Receiving a license to practice law without crushing debt also allows one to take on legal work that is centered on building and strengthening community rather than making lots of money to pay off loans. This is a truly radical aspect of the legal apprenticeship program.

As Chris Tittle, the former director of organizational resilience at SELC, writes, “Laws protect those who write and defend them. So, in a country where over 88 percent of lawyers are white, 70 percent are men, and 75 percent are over the age of 40, is it surprising that our legal system repeatedly fails to serve the interests of youth, women, communities of color, and other underrepresented groups?”

SELC’s Chris Tittle and legal apprentices Yassi Eskandari-Qajar and Christina Oatfield

The Nuts and Bolts

The requirements for legal apprenticeships vary by state. In California, for example, apprentices are required to work and study with a practicing attorney 18 hours per week for four years. Supervising attorneys must also give monthly exams and bi-annual progress reports. Apprentices also take a law students exam (dubbed “The Baby Bar”) after the first year. At the end of their apprenticeship, they’re eligible to take the full Bar Exam.

The fees associated with the apprenticeship route are a tiny fraction of law school tuition. Christina Oatfield, who apprenticed with SELC co-founder Jenny Kassan (and went on to work with the SELC for almost 8 years and currently provides legal services to Shareable), broke down the costs in California (updated to reflect 2024 costs):

• Initial registration fee: $158
• Fee paid to the California Bar every six months: $30*
• First-Year Law Students Exam: $600–$800 each time. (The pass rate is around 20% so many students take the exam more than once.)
• Bar exam at the end of the four years: $1,000 each time.
• Books and other study materials: $1,000+.

The total cost can be as low as a few thousand dollars. As Oatfield said in 2013, “Not bad compared to law school tuition.”

*Current fees could not be confirmed by the time we reprinted this story.

Find a Supervising Attorney

The first thing you need to do is to find an attorney or judge with whom you can apprentice. This may prove to be a challenge.

“This has been a stumbling block for some people who hope to participate in the Law Office Study Program,” said Oatfield, “as some attorneys are wary of taking on the responsibility of supervising an apprentice.” However, many attorneys who have worked through the program (like Oatfield herself) are more likely to take on apprentices once they hit their five-year mark. 

In California, the supervising attorney needs to have been practicing law in the state for at least five years, and they need to spend at least five hours per week directly supervising you. Oatfield advised finding a supervising attorney who is practicing in areas of law that you want to learn about, and eventually practice in yourself.

Supervising an apprentice requires a long-term commitment of time and energy, as the attorney needs to administer and review exams, provide guidance, and offer feedback on essays. But there are benefits to doing so, including improved skill at explaining complex legal topics; the opportunity to revisit legal questions and topics; bringing new skills, as well as linguistic or cultural competencies, into practice via an apprentice; the potential to learn and grow in response to feedback from apprentices; and the joy and satisfaction that comes with collaborating on a meaningful project.

Orsi notes that people who already work in legal organizations and law offices are probably the best positioned to find supervising attorneys and start apprenticing. Oatfield, as well as Yassi Eskandari-Qajar, another former SELC legal apprentice, both volunteered for SELC before they decided to pursue legal apprenticeships.

“[W]e had already built relationships with the attorneys who are supervising us now, and developed some very basic familiarity with their areas of specialty,” Oatfield said. “I think a potential supervising attorney wants reassurance that the prospective apprentice is really committed to the study of law — and their particular area of expertise — because it can take many months, or even years, of apprenticeship before the apprentice has the potential to contribute back to the attorney’s practice.”

Once you’ve found an attorney, there are some simple forms that both of you must fill out. Check with your state to see what paperwork you’ll need.

Work While Apprenticing

Yes, it is possible to work another job while apprenticing. Or, better yet, find a paid position within the legal system. That way, you’re furthering your hands-on experience while learning the law. The additional exposure, said Eskandari-Qajar, also helps to contextualize one’s studies.

She experienced a “serious learning curve” as she was getting up-to-speed with legal terminology. This meant that she had to slow her pace and devote more outside time as she was building a foundational understanding of the law and legal terms.

“[N]ew apprentices should play it by ear and be prepared to give more time and energy toward the beginning…if they are like me and new to the field.” She continued, “I imagine that, when I am preparing for the first-year law students exam, I will have to really ramp up the time I give to the apprenticeship, and do so again prior to taking the bar exam. If you can strike an arrangement with your employer that is flexible around those times, that would be ideal.”

Orsi points out that apprenticing only requires 18 hours per week of work and/or study, and the idea is that the apprentice should not be required to study beyond that. But if the apprentice spends 18 hours doing legal work that doesn’t prepare them well for the bar exam, they should make extra time to study the bar exam topics.

The inspiration for LikeLincoln. Photo by Ron Cogswell (CC)

Practical Tips

For Eskandari-Qajar, one of the most important tips she offered is to make time. “Even if you have a job in the field of law, there will be things that aren’t covered by either the apprenticeship or work,” she said. “For those, you have to hit the books.”

Orsi advised that apprentices — especially those with weak writing skills — do a lot of writing, as two-thirds of the bar exam is essay writing. In law school, most exams involve essays, so students get a lot of practice.

“[A] key skill for passing the bar exam, and for practicing law,” Orsi said, “is the ability to write well and organize information clearly. Apprentices with strong writing skills will have a significant edge, and will be able to spend more time doing practical work, and less time writing practice exams.”

Studying and Test-Taking

The two solid days of intense test-taking make the bar exam extremely stressful; Orsi offered advice to those preparing for it:

“My theory is that it’s good to develop positive associations with test taking, if possible,” she said. “So each time I give a monthly exam to the apprentices, I try to do something fun or silly, before, during, or after. Last month, I brought a massage chair to the office on exam day.”

She said that she’s unsure if these things will “ultimately reduce the torture of the bar exam,” but figures there’s no harm in doing fun or silly things, so it’s worth a try.

When Orsi was studying for the bar exam, she had audio courses that she listened to while hiking and biking. She also wrote dozens of songs that outlined the 12 bar exam topics to the tune of 12 different karaoke tracks, including “I Will Survive” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” In the final weeks before the exam, she got up and sang the songs every day.

“I did everything possible to make it enjoyable,” she said. “I did not do what most people do, which is pay $3,000–$5,000 for an intensive bar exam prep course. However,” she continued, “I might actually recommend that apprentices do take such a course, because they may benefit from re-learning the material in a classroom context, and from receiving significant input on their practice exams.”

Challenges

For as many benefits as it offers, LikeLincoln advises that the apprenticeship route isn’t for everyone. Since the apprenticeship option is not offered nor recognized by all states, there are geographic concerns. Law school libraries also offer a host of resources that apprentices can’t access, and some big law firms may be more inclined to hire lawyers who have gone to law school.

One of the benefits of law school is being surrounded by other law students. Developing a peer circle is a good way to gauge your progress and find support during challenging and stressful times. 

You’ll also need to determine if you’re the kind of person who would do better in law school than as a legal apprentice. LikeLincoln advises law school if you: need a structured curriculum and learn well by listening to lectures; enjoy the social aspects of school and the academic side of law school, with its highly intellectual arguments; want the prestige of a law degree; or want to work in a big law firm or teach in a law school.

The Big Picture

For self-starters who want to jump right into legal work, becoming a legal apprentice is an attractive alternative to law school. But as Eskandari-Qajar reminded us, this is a big commitment, not to be taken lightly.

“Even though you are not dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars on this educational path, you are investing four years of your time to become a lawyer,” she said. “Remember to keep your eye on the prize, and don’t forget why you chose to take this path instead of taking other paths.”

The post How to become a lawyer without going to law school appeared first on Shareable.

Along with this acknowledgment, we share an understanding that — for many people — the scope of the holiday season stretches beyond this traditional observance, serving as a time of communal gathering, shared gratitude, and rest. Below are some ideas for having a community-driven, gratitude-inducing holiday, the Shareable way.

Share food

For many, the impetus of the holiday season is the promise of family and food. But you can remix these staples and get creative with your gathering ideas as well. Away from family? Host a Friendsgiving. New to the neighborhood? Opt for a Stranger Dinner. Put your meal to music and have a house concert instead.

Some areas even have community meals, open to anyone who wants to gather with their community-at-large. These gatherings are a great way to meet your neighbors, connect with your community, and share in the abundance of the holiday. Contact your city officials or search the web to see if there’s a Thanksgiving community meal in your town.

If you want to get out and get involved, local turkey drives, soup kitchens (and even Buy Nothing groups) are great ways to share and distribute extra food and other essentials to community members who could use it.

Share skills & stuff

Have a skill you’d like to offer to others or maybe just some free time? Now is a great time to share.

The holidays can be a hard time for many. Struggles like food insecurity, houselessness, and social isolation mean not everyone has the same reasons to celebrate. If you have the time, capacity, and resources to share, you could make a big difference by offering them to those in your network and community.

The National Coalition for the Homeless has extensive resources and a database to find a shelter near you, but many volunteer opportunities are based on local needs. Check with organizations in your area to find out what you can do to help your community with its immediate needs. You can also use the holiday season as a springboard into year-round volunteer work. VolunteerMatch connects volunteers with a number of nonprofits and community programs.

Honor Native & Indigenous perspectives

November is Native American Heritage Month. One way we honor Native communities and their experiences is by unlearning false accounts of history and standing in solidarity with Indigenous progress.

Since 1970, Native activists and other allies have gathered at Plymouth Rock to hold National Day of Mourning demonstrations that challenge the genocidal “pilgrim mythology” at the heart of traditional Thanksgiving celebrations. The 53rd Day of Mourning will take place Thursday, November 24. This year, the celebration will be live-streamed on Facebook and also covered live by The Red Nation.

You can practice solidarity (and help others in your network do the same) by amplifying Native actions like these and learning from Native thought leaders like Nick Estes, Rebecca Nagle, Dallas Goldtooth, and others.

Practice gratitude year-round

You don’t have to wait until Thanksgiving rolls around to give thanks. You can practice mindfulness and gratitude year-round. The holidays are a great time to introduce these concepts to the whole family as well. The Imagination Tree and We Are Teachers offer a host of free arts and crafts ideas and activities for children to get the gratitude ball rolling.

Explore other ways to share and connect 

Did you know that we have an archive of over 300 how-to guides? How To Share has a cornucopia of resources that can help you share everything from food to transportation to time and housing — a number of which can be modified for any holiday celebration. Take a look and get sharing!

This article has been updated and amended from an earlier Shareable article.

The post Giving thanks: Share food, time and gratitude this holiday season appeared first on Shareable.

Born of a resolve to protect the earth and educate people about our relationship with it, Earth Day will be celebrated around the world this weekend. While park gatherings, festivals and other events are nice, the real change happens not in one-off gatherings, but in changing our lifestyles to prioritize the planet.

This Earth Day, celebrate, learn, and spread the word about conservation, reusing, composting, sustainability, recycling, sharing and all that good stuff. But don’t let that be the end of it. Let Earth Day serve as a seed for creating a lasting, positive impact in your corner of the planet. Below are some how-to’s to get the ball rolling. For more ideas, check out Shareable’s How to Share Guide.

How to be a car-free family

One of the biggest changes you can make for the planet, your health and your pocketbook is to go car-free. Making the leap to being car-free with little ones in tow, however, poses some unique challenges. Here’s some practical advice on making it work (and enjoying the ride), from parents who have been there.

How to transform plastic “waste” into a bottle brick

Bottle bricks (or “eco bricks”) have been used to build houses, school buildings, and other structures for well over a decade in Latin America and they are now increasingly being used around the world as a viable way to clean up the environment, prevent plastic pollution, and create a much-needed building material.

How to launch your own seed lending library

Did you ever think that gardening, or saving and sharing seeds would be an act of resistance? Seed lending libraries can serve as essential tools in maintaining control of what we eat, as well as bringing awareness to the growing control big business has over our food supply.

How to start and participate in a Buy Nothing group

Capitalism, consumerism and planned obsolescence have done a number on our environment. Among other practices, simply buying less stuff helps us cut down on waste, consume intentionally and build community. Buy Nothing facilitates local gift economies around the world — communities that take care of their local members while conserving their carbon footprints.

How to dumpster dive, eat free & fight waste

Like suburban organization, the supermarket puts a premium on appearance, convenience, and profit and is not designed for ecological or human-scale concerns. With a little bit of effort, you can make sure at least some of that waste goes to use, and save yourself a lot of money in the process, by dumpster diving for the perfectly good food that often becomes waste.

How to create abundant cities

There’s a lot of focus on creating sustainable cities these day. And do we ever need it! But in addition to cities that close the circle on waste and energy consumption, we can work to create cities of abundance, where art, music, and expression are encouraged and supported.

How to run a bike valet

Bike valets aren’t limited to festivals and farmers’ markets. You can set them up wherever there are people, bikes and a little space. Consider setting up or suggesting bike valet services for restaurants, business parks, churches or malls. They’re pretty simple to set up, they encourage bicycle infrastructure, and cyclists will rest easy knowing that their wheels are being watched.

How to start a community composting project

Frustrated your town doesn’t offer a way for you to compost your food scraps? Don’t despair. Get active. Composting is a proven way to address problems like climate disruption. It cuts methane emissions at landfills, while storing carbon in soils.

How to achieve a zero-waste lifestyle

Transitioning to a zero-waste lifestyle doesn’t happen overnight, but is a noble endeavor worth investing your time and energy in. Melanie Mannarino, the author of The (Almost) Zero-Waste Guide, wrote about working up to a zero-waste life in whatever ways we are comfortable in all aspects of our lives.

5 ways to achieve circular development on the local level

The circular economy turns linear supply chains into loops so that nothing is wasted. Ideally, there is no more end of the line like a landfill. But what does a circular city look like, and how can local governments and citizens come together to create one?

This article was originally published on April 17, 2013.

Check out these related articles:

• Green dreams for Earth Day
• How viewing cities as organisms can change the way we use and consume resources
• These apps aim to reduce the social and environmental impacts of food waste

The post 10 ways to celebrate Earth Day with permanent change appeared first on Shareable.

Shareable connected with Gene Homicki, co-founder and CEO of myTurn, an online platform that makes it easy for anyone to start and manage a Library of Things. Communities use myTurn to share tools and home goods, universities use it for bike and equipment lending, and utility companies use it to share energy efficiency tools with builders.

As Homicki says, myTurn allows new lending libraries to use the “best practices baked right into the platform” and focus on the things that are unique to their community. The platform is used by over 130 tool, kitchen, and other community lending libraries, as well as hundreds of nonprofits, universities, municipalities, and enterprises.

We asked Homicki for his top tips for starting a Library of Things.

Shareable: The Library of Things movement has grown from a whisper into a buzz. What’s behind the excitement? What’s the future for Libraries of Things?

Gene Homicki: More and more people are realizing the joy of being able to access the things they need, without the burden of owning and storing them. This movement, and the buzz behind it, really started with tool libraries and kitchen libraries, and other specialty lending libraries, most of which got their start using myTurn.

Now, Libraries of Things are rolling together all the things people only infrequently need and bringing them together in one place, so they have something for everyone. Pay one membership or subscription fee, and you can borrow everything from camping gear to a popcorn maker—how awesome is that?

And more than just access to stuff, Libraries of Things typically build community by offering classes and a place where people can share not just things, but also ideas and skills. The best Libraries of Things start out building a place to borrow and share things and end up building a community.

Once someone decides to create a Library of Things, what are the first steps to get started?

It’s really exciting when you first come up with or learn about, a library that lends tools, camping gear, games, and other things, rather than just books. As a first step, share that excitement with others and start to form a team to make the Library of Things a reality. Also, learn more about what’s already been done and the types of resources that are available to help you get started.

Reading posts about Libraries of Things on Shareable is a great start and there are other resources online including the ShareStarter.org site, as well as existing Libraries of Things to learn from. For example, SHARE – A Library of Things, in Frome, England, which was the first permanent library of things, offers a whole packet of information about how they got started and includes sample forms and procedures.

Don’t reinvent the wheel when you don’t have to. Talk with others who have done it already, then start defining the plan that is right for your community. Bringing others in early and learning what resources are available helps ensure you don’t feel too overwhelmed and, besides, it’s more fun to plan and work with others.

Download our free ebook: Library of Things: A Cornerstone of the Real Sharing Economy

What kind of team do you need to get a Library of Things started? What are some valuable or necessary skills?

We typically recommend a core team of three to seven people so you’re not doing everything yourself, and you have a variety of skills on the team. Diverse backgrounds and skillsets are ideal, but not completely necessary.

Useful skills to have include project management, bookkeeping, and finance, fundraising, legal, marketing, design and technology. These are really similar skills needed to start any organization or business. I recommend mapping out the skills your team does have and find advisors to help you fill out the skills your team might be missing.

If you’re starting as a nonprofit, you can often find discounted or pro-bono legal and other professional services. In addition to finding local volunteers, nonprofits may also be able to tap into AmeriCorps volunteers.

As you prepare to open, team members with management (retail, volunteer management if you’re a nonprofit, etc.) skills, and also skills to maintain and repair the items in your Library of Things can be exceedingly useful.

Don’t let one or a few missing skillsets stop you from getting going. If you’re passionate about the idea and can communicate it well to others, you’ll almost certainly be able to inspire others to help you fill in the gaps.

What options are there for organizational structure of a Library of Things? Nonprofit? For-profit? Cooperative? An offshoot of an existing organization or library?

We currently have over 130 libraries lending to the public on the myTurn platform, and all of those structures—co-op, nonprofit, for profit, public library and offshoot of an existing organization—are represented by our customers.

Many public libraries are looking for ways to stay relevant and increase the services they offer to their communities, therefore many of these institutions are receptive to the idea of expanding to lend out more types of items.

Personally, I like the co-op model, where community members have a direct stake in the success of the library. One of our first customers, the Vancouver Tool Library, manages both their co-op membership and their tool library membership via our platform.

Since Libraries of Things can help reduce consumption and waste, while providing access to items many people can’t afford to buy, going the nonprofit route can open up funding from local government, community foundations, and people who are willing to donate toward helping address these important social and environmental issues. With a non-profit or co-op model, people are often very open to donating their own underutilized items to help support what is clearly a community resource. This often makes it very easy to build your initial inventory.

At this point, the for-profit model offers the biggest risk—and reward. You typically don’t have the built-in customer base you get with a co-op (the co-op members) and accepting donations of items is not always an option. If you have the resources to go this route though, rental businesses have been successful and profitable for many decades, and this is an extension of that model into other types of items and services. In fact, we hope to see more “sharing centers” and fewer shopping centers in the future.

Do you need a business plan? A budget? What other things are necessary?

Whether you’re a nonprofit, for profit, co-op or other type of organization looking to start a public Library of Things, we do recommend at least putting together basic business plan. Rather than a 20-page formal business plan that almost no one will look at, we recommend using the Social Lean Canvas or one of the other business canvas templates that have come out of the lean business movement.

Whether you’re writing grants, starting a crowdfunding campaign, or talking with potential investors, you’ll also want to have a budget and basic financial projections. Again, cover the basics so you have a general idea of what you’ll need to start and manage the library, but you don’t need to have every piece in place before moving forward.

What types of items work best in a Library of Things? Are there things that don’t work well?

The best items for a Library of Things are those that people want and need, but might not have the space to store, the money to purchase, or the need to use all the time. You also want to stock items that are both durable and repairable, since they’ll see a lot more use than the typical power drill that is only used for 10 to 20 minutes over its life before being disposed of.

So far, we’re seeing all types of items like hand and power tools, baby carriers, board and video games, sporting goods, bread makers, drones, party supplies, camping gear, and just about anything else you can imagine. We strongly recommend doing market research in your community before you open to ensure the items you’re going to carry are the ones that are most appropriate for your area. At myTurn, we can provide advice on the most popular types of items in areas similar to your new Library of Things, and even ones that have proven to be more repairable and durable.

To get started, we recommend putting together—or borrowing from an existing Library—an initial wish list, then get feedback from potential members of the Library of Things to see what they want.

Good examples for a starter list include tools, like a tile saw or floor sander that you might only need for one project or that not everyone can afford. If you live in a food desert, or where there is food insecurity, gardening tools are a great option to help people grow their own food. Camping gear can be a great way to help introduce more people to the outdoors and nature. All sorts of kitchen tools like bread makers, ice cream and pasta makers or other items that most people find to be fun but don’t use every day are useful. Toys, board games, and especially pricey video games are also great items to have, as some parents can’t afford them and kids can get tired of them quickly. I would have loved to have access to hundreds of toys and games as a kid (and love it now!).

Things to avoid are items that are not durable or made to hold up to high usage. Libraries of Things should focus on trying to get more durable and repairable items that can be reused over and over. Other types of items to avoid can be ones that are dangerous (e.g. chainsaws), need a lot of maintenance or calibration between each use, or that need—and can be difficult—to clean between every use.

Again, it is really important that as you are planning your Library of Things that you survey your members and potential members to see what they would want and need—and create and post a wish list.

How does a Library of Things obtain its inventory? Do they purchase it or get it donated?

For nonprofits and co-ops, we recommend accepting donations of items from the community. If you’re getting started in the US, Canada or an area with a good mix of incomes and socioeconomic status, there are almost always some people who have too much stuff in their garages, closets, attics, and storage spaces that are happy to get items back into use.

Accepting donations also gives more people in the community a sense of ownership and accomplishment, because they’ve helped make the library of success. In turn, this sense of ownership helps reduce the number of items that are not returned or are returned late because not returning an item would be like stealing from your neighbor or even yourself.

There are some items that you just can’t get via donation. Things that are in high demand, or where the low-cost versions break down often, for example, pressure washers. For these types of items, we strongly suggest purchasing the most durable and repairable items you can afford. With the large number of organizations using our platform, at myTurn, we can even make recommendations on some of the best items to purchase for a lending library based on usage and durability statistics.

What kind of space works the best for a library of things, and what requirements are there of the space, in regards to infrastructure?

Similar to retail spaces, the best types of spaces for a Library of Things are those that are visible and easily accessible to the community. The Sharing Depot in Toronto recently moved from a basement space to ground-floor retail that allows people just walking down the block to see, and covet, the things they can borrow. Co-locating in community centers, public libraries, or even in schools or universities can provide a way to tap into existing foot traffic as well.

Libraries of Things can get really creative with their spaces though. For example, the Missoula Urban Development project runs a Tool and Kitchen Library out of multiple shipping containers, the London Library of Things also just opened in a reclaimed shipping container. DeDeelkelder in Utrect, Netherlands allows you to paddle right up to the Library of Things as they operate out of what used to be wharf storage space that has been converted into a community resource, and more recently, out of a pop-up shop.

I also recommend getting more space than you think you’ll need, though not more than you think you can afford, if possible. Almost every library we’ve helped get started has run out of space—especially the ones that accept donations of items from the community.

As the Library of Things movement gains steam, we’re going to see new spaces popping up that range from the rugged to the high-end retail. Imagine a traditional mom and pop rental shop with a gaggle of items everywhere, to spaces that look more like an Apple store or Tesla dealership that are ultra modern. What works best is going to depend on the target customer and location.

How do you suggest people find a space? Are there best practices in dealing with landlords or owners?

To an extent, this depends on the type of organization, budget, and where you are.

For small nonprofits and community groups, we recommend trying to find partner organizations that already have potentially underutilized space. Check with developers and landlords that are looking to support a more resilient community and might be willing to provide discounted or even free space. As an example, the Santa Rosa Tool Library operates out of extra storage space for a local architecture firm that supports their mission.

Also work with local government or building owners of vacant space. It’s easier to rent a vibrant space with foot traffic than an empty one, so this often works out as a win-win situation. The Library of Things get a pop-up space for a pilot, and the landlord ends up with a more valuable space.

If you’re in a low or mixed-income area and plan to ensure everyone can afford to use the Library of Things, see if there are programs that can help fund your space or receive other discounts.

If you’re operating your Library of Things as formal business, you’ll likely be going with a traditional lease. Laws and regulations vary from municipality to municipality, state to state and country to country and we typically recommend at least talking with a commercial real estate expert.

No matter the type of space or organization, we recommend having someone familiar with leases and contracts—preferably legal counsel—check over the lease before you sign it.

What kind of insurance options are there for a Library of Things?

A Library of Things looks a lot like either a library or a rental shop to insurers, so there tend to be different options depending on how you form your Library of Things.

In the US, we know a number of Library of Things that have had luck with Philadelphia Insurance as they often write policies for nonprofits and more unique businesses.

There are also newer insurance services that focus on the sharing economy and on-demand economy. These might be more appropriate if, and when, a Library of Things helps facilitate rentals or sharing directly between their members in a peer-to-peer fashion.

Many public libraries are self-insured through their municipality or can get an additional rider on their existing policy for their Library of Things if needed.

In addition to insurance, also be careful of other legal requirements. For example, there are data privacy requirements in Canada, Europe, and other locations that cover even basic contact information. At myTurn we help on the electronic side, but there are often data security and other procedures for how you handle user data locally that can still apply. We’re looking at these types of options and potentially offering insurance via our platform to remove one more pain point from getting started.

Any gotchas people should watch out for when opening a Library of Things? What are the biggest challenges or hurdles to opening one? How are these best handled?

Up-front planning and making sure you put together a good team is important from the get-go. We know of one or two libraries that had to close because their founders had to resign due to personal issues. Be sure to try build something bigger than yourself.

For libraries that rely on volunteers, make sure managing the library is as easy as possible to help reduce volunteer burnout. One Library of Things switched to our platform due to the difficulties and extra work volunteers had to do due to their home-grown solution.

myTurn is used by numerous library of things, providing the software for tracking loans and more. At what point does a tech solution become necessary? Is it possible to create a library without software? What are the challenges of doing so?

While you can start without technology, once you get beyond a couple dozen items or members it becomes very burdensome to manage a Library of Things without a software platform. You’ll be spending your time dealing with writing things down on paper, manually emailing people when things are due or overdue, and reporting will be a hassle at best—and impossible at worst.

Before there were great technology solutions like myTurn to manage tool libraries and Libraries of Things, there were about a dozen tool libraries, and they were difficult to get started. We’ve seen tool, kitchen and now Library of Things start to rapidly pop-up now that, from the start, you can sign up members and let the community see your inventory (or your wish list) online right from the start.

Whether you use our platform or another, we recommend bringing in a technology platform to manage the library right away. We’ve had customers start to enter inventory as it comes in and, more importantly, sign up paying members months before their library opens. This gives the team experience with the platform from the start, so that when they open they are ready to hit the ground running. To help small nonprofit and community based Libraries of Things get going, myTurn often offers longer term “trials” and discounts to help ensure our costs do not prevent a Libraries of Things from helping build a more resilient local community.

The first three to six months of being open tend to be hectic and a learning experience, and often growth will happen faster than expected. For example, if your organization accepts donated items, you’ll find that your community is likely full of items people would love to find a new home for. If you’re already familiar with a platform, handling those unexpected spikes in activity are much easier. The more you can have streamlined and working smoothly from the start, the easier the learning curve will be after launch.

What pricing or membership structure do you recommend? 

The best pricing model is going to depend on your local community, needs and your goals for your Library of Things.

Four common models are:

1. Membership or subscription-based: where you pay a yearly or monthly fee and then check items out for free
2. Charging a per-item rental/loan fee, similar to a traditional rental shop
3. A combination of membership and fees:
   • More expensive or in-demand items may require an additional fee
   • Different membership levels may offer different percentage discounts on per-item fees—or number of items you can have out at once
4. Completely free: typically used by public libraries, but also some community Library of Things

The model that seems to be the most sustainable and popular is the one with monthly or yearly subscription fee, and then having additional fees for more expensive or popular items. The membership fees give you a steady stream of income, while the additional fees help ensure you can maintain—or purchase more of—popular and more expensive items. The exact amounts we’d recommend will vary based on the area and types of items in the Library of Things, though we do recommend some sort of sliding scale to ensure everyone in the community can afford to access the things they need.

We’re still in the early stages of Libraries of Things, and there will continue to be experimentation going on. This is another area where I especially recommend talking with potential members to see what they can, and are willing to, afford, and try to be as inclusive as possible, ensuring there is a way everyone can use your Library of Things.

What are some of the best ways you’ve seen people building community around a Library of Things? Any tips for getting the word out?

We recommend starting by getting the word out via local blogs, visiting meetings of other community and business groups, and then moving on to more traditional media.

Running a crowdfunding campaign can also be a great way to help start or expand a tool or kitchen library into a Library of Things. Offering membership as a perk can both help you meet your funding goal and start building your membership before you open. Also, when members of the community contribute to starting the Library of Things, they become invested, both literally and figuratively, in its success.

If you are opening the first Library of Things in your area, getting media can be almost as easy as getting donations of items for your inventory. At myTurn, we even field calls from local TV and radio stations wanting to know if there is a Library of Things in their area because they have heard about them and would love to do a story about them. Most people love the idea of a Library of Things once they hear about it, so pitching online and traditional media is usually pretty easy.

Once you have people coming in the door—which is usually not difficult—building and connecting that community is important. We recommend adding classes and workshops as soon as you have the ability to do so. Bringing people together and helping ensure they have the skills to use the different types of things in the library is a great way to connect the community. Also encourage your members and class participants to tell their friends about the Library of Things.

I’d even recommend doing some fun events. For example, a games night where members and friends come and play some of the games at the Library of Things. The Denver Tool Library is even holding a concert series with local bands. It doesn’t get much better than that. These types of events build community and bring people into the space so they can see what it is all about.

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The article was originally published in 2016. Follow @CatJohnson on Twitter. 

Disclosure: MyTurn is an in-kind sponsor of Shareable offering technical support.

The post How to start a Library of Things appeared first on Shareable.

1. Explore Your Town

When was the last time you set out to explore your city, town, or even neighborhood. There are beautiful and interesting things all around that we rarely notice. Take advantage of Black Friday to set out on foot and explore what’s right around you.

2. Host a Used Toy Exchange

If the thought of bringing more toys into your house is overwhelming, try hosting a toy exchange. The idea is simple: people bring toys they’re no longer using and swap them, with other families, for toys that the kids will use. It’s a win-win as you purge unused stuff and freshen up the toy choices for the kids.

3. Celebrate Nature

Photo: OakleyOriginals (CC-BY)

While masses of people push their way into big box stores, some commoners will head outdoors—as far away from Black Friday as we can get. Take the day to celebrate the beauty of the natural world around us at parks, reserves, beaches, and forests.

4. Host a Gift Circle

A gift circle is a way to “match resources with needs, create community and inspire gratitude and generosity.” Bringing people together to share both their needs and what they have to offer is a powerful tool for community-building and supporting individuals.

5. Make Music with Friends

What’s more fun than listening to music? Making music! And you don’t have to be a pro to have a great time. Here are 20 tips for jamming with friends.

6. Visit a Public Space

Photo: Prayitno (CC-BY)

We’ve been conditioned to think that we have to spend money when we go out, but there are a growing number of public spaces that exist simply as places for people to gather. What great public spaces are there in your town? Town plazas? Vibrant neighborhoods or districts? Benches on a favorite street? On Black Friday, swing by them and see what’s going on.

7. Throw a Potluck

Hosting a potluck is a great way to get to know your neighbors, bring friends and family together, and celebrate all that we have. Plus, you’ll have all those Thanksgiving leftovers to pass around.

8. Throw a Holiday Gift Swap

Most of us have a lot of perfectly good things sitting around gathering dust, or tucked away in boxes. By hosting a holiday gift swap, we can move those items along to a home where they’ll get more use, and bring home things that will be of more use to us.

9. Take Your Sweetie On a Free Date

If you’re celebrating Buy Nothing Day as a way to stay sane on Black Friday, you can still take your sweetie out on a date. Here are dozens of our suggestions for dates that don’t cost a thing.

10. Host a Clothing Swap

As with a toy swap, or a holiday gift swap, a clothing swap is a great opportunity to practice out with the old—in with the new, without spending a dime. This is also a fun way to freshen up your wardrobe and let go of those things you no longer wear.

11. Make a Free Things Box and Give Stuff Away

Flip the script on Black Friday consumerism and give stuff away. Here’s a quick guide on making a free things box.

12. Host a Bike Ride

Bring people together for fun and exercise with a group bike ride. Here are some tips on introducing those inexperienced friends to the ways of the bike, and the road.

13. Throw a Craft Skillshare

Do you have a craft skill you can share? Maybe you’re a champion knitter, or a handlettering master, or jewelry maker. Round up a few of your craft-loving friends and teach each other a new skill.

14. Express Gratitude

Photo: Rosana Prada (CC-BY)

Don’t let your gratitude end on Thanksgiving. Take time on Black Friday to express and feel thankful for all the good things in your life. Want to make gratitude more a part of your daily routine? Here are six habits of highly grateful people.

15. Work On Your Happiness Toolbox

Happiness comes and goes, but there are strategies we can use to make it a more central part of our lives. Here are some tips for building up your “happiness toolbox.”

What commons-based tips do you have for staying sane on Black Friday? Please let us know: info@shareable.net

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This article was originally published on November 18, 2015. Follow @CatJohnson on Twitter

The post 15 Ways for Commoners to Stay Sane on Black Friday appeared first on Shareable.

1. Romantic Cottage – Carinthia, Austria

Help Power-up Shareable with a tax-deductible donation today! As a nonprofit publisher, we rely on support from readers like you.

Originally a corn and crop barn, this little cottage which is hailed as a romantic getaway, was described by one guest as “perfect.”

2. Quiet & Cozy Tiny House on the Bay – Olympia, Washington

Handbuilt by the host Brittany, this tiny home is nestled away in a lovely rural setting overlooking the Puget Sound, but is still just minutes away from downtown Olympia so you can take in some local culture as well.

3. Aroma(n)tica Treehouse – San Salvatore Monferrato, Italy

This peaceful treehouse has cozy accommodations, stunning views, and the aroma of surrounding herb and flower gardens to boot. Described as a “suspended nest” it’s a wine lover’s paradise, surrounded by top-quality wine producers and imbued with enological history.

Built for a Romany by a Romany and taken to the Appleby Horse Fair, this little wagon is the real deal. I’m thinking that sleeping in this beauty would lend itself to some pretty amazing dreams and the sense that you’ve just time-traveled to another dimension.

4. Writer’s Cabin – Stockholm, Sweden

Calling all wordsmiths: How does hiding away in a writer’s cabin in Stockholm sound? Pretty nice, eh?

5. A-Frame, Rustic, Off-Grid Cabin – Gasquet, Ca

Feeling rustic? Don’t mind roughing it a bit? Check out this hand-built, A-frame cabin in the heart of Six Rivers National Forest. Oh yeah, and there’s an outdoor kitchen, organic garden, wood-fired sauna, and custom bodywork sessions available.

6. Charming Shotgun Cottage – New Orleans, Louisiana

Why not take in the Big Easy tiny house style? This little cottage, which has been described as a dollhouse, is close to cultural hotspot Magazine Street and has convenient access to public transportation so you can move about the city with ease.

7. The Rustic Modern Tiny House – Portland, Oregon

It’s rustic, it’s modern, it has stairs and a sleeping loft, it was built by its hosts, and it was featured on the TV show Tiny House Nation. According to previous guests, it’s a great way to have a rustic little getaway, in the middle of a hip, happening city.

8. Treehouse – Chiang Mai, Thailand

Part of a yoga and meditation homestay facility, this treehouse is a way to really get away from it all. As one guest writes, it offers “falling asleep to the raucous sounds of crickets, tree frogs, and waking up to birdsong and the smell of trees.” And, it’s only a 10 minute drive from the town center.

9. Cave House – Granada, Spain

In Granada, Spain, people have been inhabiting caves since ancient times. Now you can see what it feels like to stay in a place where you can feel “the embrace of the earth.” Yes, they’re fully equipped, yes, they are pedestrian-friendly and close to public transit, and yes, the caves even have wi-fi!

For more tiny house goodness, check these out:

• 11 Tiny House Villages Redefining Home
• Interviewed: The World’s First Tiny House Hoteliers
• The Tiny House Infographic Proves That Less Is More

Header image Above: Retreat in Paradise – Canarias, Spain. 

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