Party kits are most commonly used for children’s birthday parties, with plastic tableware being the most popular choice as it is durable, lightweight, affordable, and suitable for young children. However, party kits have also been used for baby showers, workplace BBQs, community group meetings, and even gallery openings. 

How Party Kits Fit into a Library of Things

The party kit concept aligns closely with the principles of lending libraries, and many have already successfully added party kits to their inventories. There are two main models for incorporating party kits:

1. Pre-packed party kits: These are boxes of tableware lent out as single items. This setup is common in locker-based sharing libraries or libraries where tableware is not the main focus, such as public libraries, toy libraries, and nappy libraries. It simplifies administration by reducing the effort required to prepare each rental, though borrowers may end up taking more items than they need. Here is an example of Share Bristol’s party kit listing: https://things.sharebristol.org.uk/product/2314 

2. Customisable party kits: In this model, users build their own party kits by selecting items from the library’s inventory of tableware, decorations, and other party essentials. A basic party kit, such as a set of plates and cups, may still be offered as a pre-packed option, with the flexibility for borrowers to add other items as needed.  

Regardless of the model, all lending libraries offering party kits require that items are washed before being returned. Clear guidance should be provided on which items are dishwasher safe (most plastic tableware can be washed on an Eco cycle at lower temperatures) and the importance of ensuring everything is thoroughly dried before repacking and returning.

Benefits of Offering Party Kits 

Lending libraries that include kits report numerous benefits for both the library and its members:

Benefits for Borrowers

• Access to a broader inventory, including items like gazebos, bunting, party games, tables, chairs, tablecloths, jugs, and cool boxes. This reduces the need for one-time purchases that can often go unused after the event. 

• Affordability: For libraries with annual memberships, borrowing a party kit is often comparable with buying disposable supplies, with the added benefit that with each hire members are getting even more value for money. 

Benefits for Libraries

• Increased membership: Party kits attract new members, especially families. Anna Perry from Share Bristol said, “The party kits at Share Bristol definitely help us attract new members. Sometimes people find us through the Party Kit Network and join our Library of Things service to borrow one. Other times, people see the party kits as part of our inventory, which is enough to convince them to become members.”

• Inclusivity: Libraries can make party kits accessible to everyone. Lindsey Campbell from Linlithgow Tool Library explained, “We offer a pay-what-you-can system, so we don’t exclude anyone financially.”

• Broader reach: By nature, parties reach a lot of people, an opportunity to increase awareness of the library’s offerings and encourage more people to engage with local sharing.  

Community Impact

• Positive feedback: Borrowers consistently praise the ease of use and reduced waste. Helena Jackson from Stork and the Bees, a sling and nappy library with a party kit, noted: “People who have hired the kits have loved it. They’ve shared how easy it was to use, what a great idea it is, and how it means less waste. Plus, they didn’t have to buy or store reusable items themselves.”

• Visible impact: Borrowers notice the environmental benefits firsthand as they tidy up—there are significantly fewer bin bags of waste! Sharing these stories can inspire others in the community to embrace the switch to reusables and borrowing.

• Health & wellbeing: Borrowing and celebrating foster positive social connections, which are essential for mental health and wellbeing. Karen Elsbury, founder of the Elwood Kitchen Library, explains: “Our kitchen library is all about bringing people together through a love of food. By providing members of our community with access to kitchen items and party packs we enable them to entertain family and friends, celebrate together, and get creative in the kitchen.”

Free Download: “The Library of Things Toolkit”

Getting Started

If your library already includes reusable tableware in its inventory, you can join the Party Kit Network today! Joining is FREE and allows more people in your community to discover your library. Visit partykitnetwork.org/join to sign up.

If your library doesn’t yet have suitable tableware, consider these steps to get started:

1. Gauge Community Interest: Run a survey among your existing members to assess interest in a party kit. This can also be an opportunity to engage the wider community for their input, increasing awareness of your library’s services. 

2. Assess Local Needs: Before purchasing tableware, think about the types of events your members are likely to host. For example, for children’s parties typically 20-30 place settings are needed with durable, lightweight plastic tableware being a practical choice. For adult events such as BBQs, plastic tumblers are often preferred to glass for outdoor gathering due to their lighter weight and safety.

3. Source Tableware: There are several ways to acquire tableware:  

   • Community donations: Reach out to your local community to source reusable items.  

   • Preloved party kits: Purchase second-hand kits to reduce costs  

   • New tableware: Some libraries choose to buy new items, especially if they want to offer matching sets. Aesthetics can be important for members transitioning from themed single-use tableware to reusables.  

   Funding may be available from local authorities through waste prevention or small community grants, which can help cover the cost of purchasing reusable tableware.

4. Plan Hire Logistics:  

   • Hire periods: Many party kits are offered for a three-day hire giving people time to collect, party, wash and return, with most bookings occurring over the weekend. Your opening hours will likely dictate the duration of a hire.

   • Storage: Using rigid plastic storage containers is the easiest way to keep tableware clean and organised. A party kit for 30 can fit into a 48 litre box meaning it doesn’t take up too much space. Choose a size that balances capacity and ease of transport—splitting items into multiple boxes if needed to avoid heavy lifting. 

5. Reduce Losses: Include an equipment list with each party kit to help borrowers keep track of items and return everything they borrowed. Labelling items like jugs can also minimise the risk of them being left behind at party venues, while doubling as advertising for your kit. 

6. Collaborate Locally: I always recommend people check the Party Kit Network map to see if there are existing kits in the area. Most communities can support more than one kit, and connecting with other members allows you to collaborate. For example, you can refer enquiries to another provider if your kit is already booked. 

Case Study

Palo Alto’s Zero Waste Party Packs are reducing event waste

Getting More Support to Set Up a Party Kit

The Party Kit Network is committed to helping lending libraries include party kits, increasing accessibility and strengthening the sharing economy.

Here are some resources to guide you through the process:

• Comprehensive Guide: Download our detailed guide to running a party kit at https://www.partykitnetwork.org/start 

• Facebook Group: Join our active community on Facebook, where members share advice and ideas: https://www.facebook.com/groups/partykitnetwork 

• Online Meet-ups: Attend our regular online sessions to ask questions and get tailored support: https://partykitnetwork.eventbrite.com 

• Tableware Materials: For more information on tableware materials, please see our guide to reusable tableware: https://www.partykitnetwork.org/post/which-type-of-reusable-tableware-is-the-greenest   

Or please drop me an email with any questions or concerns, or to be connected with another library already successfully running a party kit – hello@partykitnetwork.org 

Conclusion

Party kits are a perfect fit for lending libraries. Libraries have seen their members utilise party kits when added to the inventory, and even join a library because a party kit was offered. It has been straightforward for libraries to set up a party kit, requiring minimal storage and experiencing low rates of loss.

By offering party kits, libraries empower their communities to celebrate more sustainably, reducing waste and promoting reuse. This not only strengthens connections within the community but also supports a thriving sharing economy, where resources are used efficiently and inclusively.

Adding a party kit is a small step with a big impact—encouraging more sustainable celebrations and reinforcing the vital role of sharing libraries in creating a better future.

This article was originally published by the Party Pack Network.

The post How (and why) to add a Party Kit to your Library of Things appeared first on Shareable.

LoTs foster a sense of community and put principles of the circular economy and mutual aid into action. They offer an alternative to consumerism and selfishness by promoting sharing and sustainability, providing a practical, eco-friendly way to meet everyday material needs. In today’s world, where collaboration and resourcefulness are increasingly vital, LoTs create spaces for cultivating solidarity and enabling sharing to become a daily practice.

It was with all this in mind that we launched our Libraries of Things program two years ago to showcase our new SolidarityWorks framework.

Since that time, we have surveyed community organizers and LoT practitioners in eleven countries, developed a fellowship program to launch new LoTs in historically marginalized and under-resourced communities, piloted new models of LoTs on a university campus and an affordable housing development, supported the launch of the National Tool Library Alliance, and convened the LoT Co-lab with over 200 participants from around the world. All of these projects have been made possible through the support of a growing list of partners and contributors.

Today, we’re excited to share the next offering from this program, The Library of Things Toolkit.

This comprehensive guide is designed to help people like you plan, start, and grow Libraries of Things in your community.

Free Download: “The Library of Things Toolkit”

The toolkit has been adapted from the 12 live presentations shared during the LoT Co-Lab (recorded between March and May 2024) and the expertise of the members of the National Tool Library Alliance.

There are 12 sections, each addressing a critical aspect of starting and running a Library of Things. Topics range from foundational steps like Getting Started and building an inventory (Getting Things) to practical considerations like Operations, Volunteers, and designing the physical or mobile space (Space, Going Mobile). It also covers essential strategies for Membership, Governance, Income Generation and Budgeting, and effective Communications and Marketing, as well as opportunities for hosting Workshops and Classes or collaborating with Public Libraries.

In addition to the written content, each section ends with digestible chapters from our free self-paced video course (60 videos in all!) and other resources and templates that will support you and your team as you move from inspiration to action!

This guide contains far too much information to be read straight through. We encourage you to start by skimming it to build a rough understanding of what goes into running a LoT. Then, after you have answered the core questions in Section 1 (who, what, when, where, why, and how), read sections more deeply as you reach each stage of planning and development.

This toolkit would not have been possible without the hard work and collaborative spirit of Leanna Frick, director of strategic growth at Station North Tool Library in Baltimore, MD, and the members of the National Tool Library Alliance.

A Spanish translation and printer-friendly version are currently in the works, and additional sections will be added to the web version of the toolkit over the next year, with the Library of Things Toolkit 2.0 expected to be released in late 2025.

The post New toolkit from Shareable will help you start (and grow) a Library of Things in YOUR community appeared first on Shareable.

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

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

While the supermarket may feel like a natural way to distribute food, it is, in fact, relatively new. While supermarkets began appearing as early as the 1920s, their rise to prominence coincided with the rapid growth of suburbia starting in the 1950s. Like other suburban organizations, the supermarket puts a premium on appearance, convenience, and profit, and is not designed for ecological or human-scale concerns. As a result, the supermarket we know and love, with heaping piles of fresh veggies, mountains of meat, and miles of baked goods, is one of the most pernicious producers of food waste in our country.

Because supermarkets have to maintain an appealing store, slightly bruised fruit is thrown out. If an orange goes bad in a five-pound bag, the whole bag gets thrown away, and probably a couple of bags surrounding it, just in case. If an egg breaks in a carton, it’s in the trash, because they’ll never be able to sell it. And if some yolk drips down the side onto a whole tray of eggs? In the garbage.

While this waste is a tremendous problem, especially when we live in a country (and a world) with widespread starvation, it also means that perfectly good food fills supermarket dumpsters every day. 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. With food prices on the rise, it can make a huge difference to your budget. Dumpster diving is an easy, and often fun, way to do your grocery shopping, and, believe it or not, I eat healthier when I dumpster dive; so many fresh vegetables and fruit are thrown out every day that you can eat like a king for free. How do you get started?

1. Decide you want to dumpster dive

Perhaps the hardest thing about dumpster diving is overcoming the stigma that comes with rooting through the trash. Our culture associates that behavior with poverty, and poverty with shame, and there is a strong cultural bias against dumpster diving. But dumpster diving is completely one hundred percent legal. If you live with roommates, discuss with them how you want to do it. Dumpster diving is great for communal meals because you can get a really big haul of food for free.

2. Choose a supermarket to dumpster dive

The next step is choosing a supermarket. Some supermarkets will be inaccessible because they throw their garbage away in locked dumpsters, or behind fences. This is easily checked by walking around the supermarket. If you know anyone who dumpster dives (and you’d be surprised, you might very well) they will know what supermarkets are good to go to, but generally, any medium or large supermarket will throw out enough food to make it worth your while. You’ll also learn, over time, which markets are the best. Bakeries are also always a good bet: They throw out their bread every day, so you can usually get fresh bread any time.

The next thing you need to know is when they throw out their food. Since most markets schedule private carting companies to take away their trash, food is usually only available for a couple of hours. To find out when they throw it out, you can ask a friend who dumpster dives, or wait around one night to find out. (Garbage often, but not always, goes out between an hour before and an hour after closing). Of course, if you’re feeling bold, you can just go into the store and ask an employee — usually, they’ll be glad to tell you.

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

3. Getting ready

Once you know where you’re going to go, and when, pick a day where you don’t have anything later in the evening. Dumpster diving can often be a late-night excursion, especially since you’ll have to take everything back home and wash it. It’s good to get a couple of large bags ready (you won’t be taking a whole bag out of the dumpster) and some plastic gloves if you don’t enjoy getting your hands sticky. It’s a good idea to bring a flashlight or a camping headlight too, so you can look into the bags without too much trouble.

Like any trip to the supermarket, you’re going to be coming back with a lot of food, so prepare accordingly. If you drive, it can be a good idea to lay down some newspaper in the trunk of your car. If it’s a walking-friendly city, you can use a “granny cart” and walk to the market, or bike using a bike trailer. In any case, treat it just like any normal big shopping excursion.

4. Getting the food

When you arrive, if you live in an urban area, odds are there might already be some people dumpster diving. In any case, walk up to the trash, and start feeling the bags: some bags will be mostly paper products and regular garbage, and you can usually tell this without opening up the bag. After a few trips, you’ll get the hang of this pretty quick.

If the bags are in big dumpsters, you should remove a bag and look through it, but be sure to replace the bag, tied up, into the dumpster. If the dumpsters are on the street, open them without ripping them, and tie them back up. Generally leave things as you found them; perhaps a strange admonition when dealing with trash, but it’s the best way to make sure the store doesn’t get upset with dumpster divers, and that the trash company can do their job.

The main thing when going through the trash is, don’t be bashful. Go for it! Dig through the bags with your gloves, and pull things out that feel promising. Use your judgment. If a fruit or vegetable looks rotten, don’t take it. But if you find a bag of apples or oranges and one is bad, but the rest are good, take the bag and  separate it out at home (this can be especially good if you also have a compost system.) 

Canned goods are almost always fine to take, and prepared foods usually are as well. Don’t worry too much about expiration dates: rely on your judgment and common sense about food. Don’t take anything you’re worried about; you can always do another trip. I’ve never gotten sick from dumpster diving, and there’s no reason you should either.

Once you’ve found a good amount of food, and you’re satisfied with what you have, load it all up, make sure you’ve tidied up the area, and bring your haul home.

5. Wash, store, and eat!

When you get home, make sure to wash everything that was sitting unwrapped in the trash. Just wash it thoroughly, and then store it like you would regular food. You’ll be amazed at the bounty of fresh food that you can get. You’ll be able to make delicious meals without spending a cent. And it’s always nice to prepare a big meal or host a potluck for your friends or community with the food you found. 

Of course, dumpster diving is not a solution to the major problem of food waste. We need concerted community action, and a reorganization of our priorities and our distribution systems. While CSAs, co-ops, and other more direct methods of food distribution are on the rise, the vast majority of Americans get their food from waste-producing supermarkets.

A map of food insecurity in the U.S.

In a perfect world, supermarkets would not exist as they do; the model that they operate on necessitates waste on a tremendous scale. But if you’re worried about waste, or just want to save a few dollars, dumpster diving is a great way to start getting involved. I know for me, it led to more direct political involvement in food issues in my community. I’ve written about that for Shareable before.

This article was originally published on November 7, 2012; updated February 21, 2022 and May 28, 2024.

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Repair Cafés are not only great events to get your vacuum, waffle iron, or lawn mower fixed, but the very nature of their collaborative and community-oriented learning spirit contains the antidote to our modern-day throw-away mentality. Conceived by Martine Postma, a Dutch journalist who was no longer willing to just accept that she had to throw things out that could easily be salvaged, the first Repair Café debuted in Amsterdam in October 2009.

Postma has since launched the Repair Café International Foundation (RCIF) and Repair Cafés have popped up across the world. The first Repair Café to become operational in the U.S., Repair Café Palo Alto, attracted 100 people to its first event in October 2012. Their second event was so popular that the organizers had to turn away 100 of the 300 people who showed up.

Ready to launch a Repair Café in your community? Repair Café Palo Alto co-founder Peter Skinner shared with me some useful things to know before getting started:

1. Get the Repair Café Starter Kit

The RCIF helps coordinate the network of active Repair Cafés, and stores easily accessible information in one place, so the first step in getting started is to request an information package from the Repair Café website. Once you’ve introduced yourself to the fine folks at the Repair Café mothership and familiarized yourself with their basic guidelines, it’s time to test the waters in your own backyard.

2. Find a space

If you happen to own or have access to a place with tons of tools in it, good for you, you’re ready to go. If this dream space doesn’t yet exist, start as a small neighborhood event, perhaps in a driveway or a friend’s garage, then grow organically from there.

Another good way to get started is to ask local nonprofits, your city, schools, or churches if they have a space they could make available for an afternoon. You can also tap local businesses that make space available on weekends and get their employees involved all at once.

Bonus points if you can make friends with the folks at your local hardware store (wink wink, they’ve got tools). Repair Café Palo Alto scored big when their local museum not only provided the hosting venue, but staff and board members thought it was such a great idea that they helped launch the event.

3. Locate your fixers and equipment

It’s impossible to repair toys, printers, or hair dryers without the people who know how to do it. It’s also challenging to do so without some vital pieces, like tables, power, and tools. Usually one will lead to the other. If you can connect with the fixers in your community, chances are they will have some of the tools needed, and/or point you in the right direction to locate them. You can also Invite interested people to a potluck to brainstorm. This not only helps to figure out logistics but also builds the camaraderie that defines the Repair Café spirit.

Skinner feels lucky that his group scored on both ends—he was able to pull together a bunch of like-minded friends with repair skills, then found the perfect ally for the occasion: their local Ace Hardware store offered not only supplies but an awesome staff enthusiastic about making the kick-off event a big success.

4. Prepare for the Repair Café launch event

Now that you have enough skilled repair volunteers, pick a date (weekends are best) and start planning your first event.

Food provides not only the necessary energy for hardworking, handy people and guests who are primed to learn, but it’s also the glue that binds the community together. Make sure you have tasty donated treats lined up from local businesses, or potluck items from your core volunteers.

You’ll also need to recruit volunteer organizers who will pick up donated food, manage the queue (if there is a wait list), sign in people, set up tables, and be there to handle logistics and spread good repair vibes on the day of the event.

Depending on how large a space you have and how big of an event you are comfortable with, getting the word out can range from emails to your personal networks to contacting listservs, city services, or even your local newspaper or TV station.

In Repair Café Palo Alto’s case, they had planned a soft launch without PR or major press, but local media got wind of the event and started tooting its horn, which Skinner says made planning a bit more unpredictable. “It doesn’t hurt to plan for a larger scale,” he says. Generally speaking, the ratio that’s turned out to work best for them is 30 volunteers for every 100 visitors, with two-thirds of volunteers fixers and one-third organizers.

Make sure you publicize the kind of repairs you’re prepared for. For example, if you have seamstresses with sewing machines, you can give the green light to visitors with clothes in need of stitching.

Likewise, it’s good to ask people not to bring products with a low fix rate. The more items that get repaired successfully, the better your repair crew and visitors alike will feel at the end of the day. Check out RCIF’s RepairMonitor dashboard for the latest fix-rate stats.

5. Celebrate Your Repair Café Day

So you’ve done all you could to get your space, people, and tools lined up, and the big day has arrived. Time to relax and just take it all in… just kidding. Or not.

From active participants eager to learn how to fix their own things, all the way to folks who just want to get their toaster toasting again, expect to accommodate a whole spectrum of people. From blenders and jewelry, to chairs, luggage, and bicycles, there’ll be a plethora of items, and more importantly, a whole bunch of neighbors to meet and stories to share.

Think about it: repairing a meaningful object not only saves valuable materials from the landfill and prevents the purchase of another shiny new (and poorly designed) gadget, but it adds another chapter to an already illustrious history we have with our most cherished belongings.

One of the essential elements of a Repair Café is that people don’t just come to drop off broken items to be picked up later like a traditional repair shop. Everyone is matched up with a repair person for interaction, learning, and contemplating the processes and materials that go into making modern products.

While some people maintain that Repair Cafés are all about teaching people to fix their own stuff, Skinner says his crew has decided to welcome everybody, even if they’re just coming to get their lamps fixed. “When people sit side by side with a repair person, they’re participating just by being there,” Skinner says. “We really want to leverage that part, just to educate people to think about repair first.”

This Shareable How-to Guide was originally published in 2013 and was updated in 2024.

This guide has been included in a series of action-oriented guides that align with Post Carbon Institute’s Think Resilience online course. The Think Resilience course prepares participants with the systems-level knowledge needed to take meaningful actions as suggested in this and other “How to Share” guides in the series.

Header image by MediaLab Prado via Flickr (CC License)

The post How to start a Repair Café appeared first on Shareable.

There are about 2,000 formally established LoTs around the world, as well as countless informal ones. Modern LoTs have been in operation since 1978 (the longest-running is Berkeley Tool Library since 1979), but LoTs have existed informally for far longer.

LoTs build community while bringing solidarity economy and mutual aid practices to life. They counter consumerism and individualism and are a more environmentally friendly way to meet our material needs.

In 2023, Shareable surveyed existing Libraries of Things in order to gain a better understanding of the field and identify a set of industry benchmarks. The 82 LoTs (from 11 different countries) who participated included respondents who ranged from directors to volunteers and lived in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Oceania.

The State of Libraries of Things 2024 report results reflect the experiences of the survey respondents. In future iterations of this survey, we hope to capture the experiences of even more of the 2,000+ global LoTs for increased accuracy and assessment of the needs and trends in the field.

Libraries of Things may look different around the world, but the core values of an accessible, community practice are constant. Our goal is to provide a helpful and inspiring look into the inner workings of LoTs. We hope this report is a helpful guide whether you are part of an established LoT looking to understand how it measures up to the larger field or if you are just getting started and are learning what it takes to get a new LoT off the ground and open to your community!

Download the Report: “The State of Libraries of Things 2024”

Key Takeaways

• Libraries of Things look and feel different in every community
• Many LoTs are making a difference in their communities with just a handful of volunteers and a small space like a storage unit or garage
• Generally, there are three different “types” of LoTs:
  • Fully volunteer-run, with budgets less than $10k/year, limited inventory, and average memberships of less than 200 people (these are the vast majority of LoTs!)
  • Larger independent LoTs with storefronts, significant annual budgets, and at least 1 paid Library manager
  • Municipal LoTs that are connected to city libraries, including stand-alone dedicated LoTs or collections within regular libraries
• Volunteers are critical to the success of most LoTs, especially for inventory maintenance
• Many LoTs are small with limited usage/items lent out per month
• For financial sustainability, LoTs rely most heavily on membership fees, grants, and donations
• Many LoTs have never conducted a formal needs assessment to determine what their current (and potential) user base wants and needs
• Most LoTs have been operating for less than 5 years and are open 1-3 days/week when they have capacity (with limited hours)
• The vast majority of LoTs provide other services beyond lending items
• Many LoTs are unsure of the racial, gender, income, and employment status of their members–surveying LoT membership can help inform efforts to increase diversity of membership and intentional decision-making

The Library of Things Co-Lab starts on Tuesday, March 5th. For 12 weeks (and beyond) this will be a resource-sharing hub that guides organizers through the process of incubating and strengthening LoTs to serve their communities.

Register for the Co-Lab to access the full schedule of live workshops, recordings, resources, peer network, and more. All participants are encouraged to choose their own adventure and registration will remain open until the end of the Co-Lab.

The post New report: The State of Libraries of Things 2024 appeared first on Shareable.

In addition to publishing our stories and podcasts this year, Shareable launched SolidarityWorks, our new organizing program to meet the challenges our communities face. Be sure to check out the new Emergency Battery Network Toolkit, an open-source guide designed for folks to create their own community-owned backup power supply. 

Another world is not only possible – it’s already being realized in communities across the globe. Here’s a glimpse in 10 stories:

1. From Bayanihan to Talkoot: Communal work practices from around the world

“For all of human history, societies have depended on communal work to sustain themselves into the (often unpredictable) future. However, at a certain point, that all changed. Market forces took over, and communal projects ceased to have the same significance. The individual took precedence over the community, and large public works became the purview of burgeoning states.” This story explores the key elements that differentiate communal work from other collective activities and several examples of what it has looked like in practice.

2. Mutual Aid and the movement to Stop Cop City

Writer, organizer, and teacher Dean Spade (‘Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And The Next)”) wrote a feature story about the critical role mutual aid has played in the ongoing movement to stop the construction of Cop City—and the deconstruction of parts of the Weelaunee Forest—in Atlanta.

3. How to grow your own toilet paper

Robin Greenfield is a writer, researcher, and activist who makes a strong case for growing your own toilet paper. Greenfield argues that ‘Toilet Paper Plants’ are not only easy to grow but are a way to opt out of consumerism and contribute less to the harmful environmental impacts of the toilet paper industry. Check out this How-To Guide, to start growing your own toilet paper in the new year.

4. The Response: Forced labor and immigrant dreams — Saket Soni in conversation with Rebecca Solnit

This episode of The Response podcast is the recording of a live conversation between Saket Soni and Rebecca Solnit on Saket Soni’s recent book, The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America.

The Great Escape is the harrowing story of how 500 disaster relief workers from India were trafficked to the United States under false pretenses and exposed to inhumane conditions while rebuilding New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

5. Black radical imagination helps us transform our relationships to energy, land & economy

“For those of us interested in exploring alternative visions for the future of land, economy, and energy, the answers on how best to achieve collective liberation may come in lessons hard-learned from the past. Two places to start are Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, which spans centuries from continental Africa to colonial America and the United States, and the “Black Freedom Struggle”, which offers transformative and regenerative possibilities for imagining and building a world without white supremacy.”

6. Legal tools for Land Return 

Janelle Orsi, an Oakland-based “sharing lawyer” and a director of the national nonprofit Sustainable Economies Law Center, offers her thoughts on tools that could be useful to land justice movements as they work towards and realize #LandBack, land return, and reparations. In the piece, Orsi explains, “I’m writing this for the people – especially those who own land – who are feeling animated toward repair, healing, and return of land to Indigenous and Black people. I’m also writing it for myself. As a land justice lawyer, I have tinkered with the nuts and bolts for 15 years, and I’ve found them increasingly hard to stomach. Now, I’m attuning to the ways law and legal tools have disrupted the flow of inspiration that motivates land return.”

7. Andrea Roberts: Countering displacement through collective memory

This Cities@Tufts recording tracks the history of displacement and dispossession that has led to the destruction, neglect, or dismantling of communities initially designed to protect African Americans from structural racism.

Dr. Andrea Roberts explains how these communities’ unique challenges require new planning and design tools to detect the interplay of historical and contemporary conditions contributing to the cultural erasure of African American placemaking.

8. The Spanish Civil War: Lessons in economic democracy

“The Spanish Civil War and Revolution of 1936 was arguably the 20th century’s greatest experiment in economic democracy. Seizing the opportunity opened by the conflict between the Spanish Republic and right-wing Nationalists, Spain’s workers and peasants built a new economy in the midst of the chaos.” 

9. Artisans Cooperative: An Etsy alternative, owned and run by artists and makers

Etsy, the online arts and crafts seller, raked in record profits in 2021, yet still increased artist transaction fees by 30%. Etsy’s business model relies on artists, yet the company continues to exploit and take advantage of them. Enter Artisan’s Cooperative, an online cooperative owned and run by artists and makers, not a greedy corporation. 

10. Emergency Battery Network Toolkit

This past summer, Shareable piloted the first new program of SolidarityWorks, the Emergency Battery Co-Lab, to aid organizers in building their own community back-up power supply. The Emergency Battery Network Toolkit is centered around the recordings of the pilot and includes all trainings and ‘office hours’ (edited into bite-sized chapters), summaries of each lesson (including key takeaways), graphic recordings, customizable templates, and other resources.
Learn more about the project and our partners in the project, People Power Battery Collective (a project of People Power Solar Cooperative) by checking out this episode of The Response Podcast: The Response: People Power Battery Collective with Kansas, Crystal, and Yasir.

Bonus: Everything you wanted to know about SolidarityWorks

If you can’t tell, we’re excited about the new direction we’re taking our work with SolidarityWorks. Since 2009, Shareable has been instrumental in radical transformative cultures — we’ve published more than 4,500 stories and 300 how-to guides, distributed 50+ seed grants, and advised hundreds of organizers, policymakers, and social innovators. We are utilizing our history of storytelling, our role in the solidarity economy ecosystem, and our convening experience to help local communities move from inspiration to action through Co-Labs, trainings, and comprehensive toolkits.

The post Best of Shareable 2023 | Reader’s Digest appeared first on Shareable.

But, what if you could grow your own toilet paper? According to environmental activist Robin Greenfield, you can do just that. 

Greenfield’s Grow Your Own Toilet Paper Initiative is about supporting thousands of people in switching to homegrown toilet paper in 2023 by providing cuttings or seeds (depending on the climate where you live) for a nominal donation. These provisions can grow large enough “Toilet Paper Plants” to save participants from buying toilet paper for the rest of their lives.

When I moved to Orlando, Florida in 2018 I planted two cuttings of the Toilet Paper Plant that a friend gave me, and within one year I had a TP bush abundant enough to support a family of five, plus cuttings to share with hundreds of friends each year so they could grow their own TP too!

Here are a few of my favorite reasons to grow your own toilet paper:

• • • These plants are easy to grow. They are great for beginner growers or even as a first plant! They can be grown in the ground or in pots.
    • These plants thrive! Even if you aren’t ready to make the switch to your homegrown TP, you can plant it now so you have it in case there’s a pandemic with a TP shortage. But let’s be real, we don’t need to wait for that. These leaves are the Charmin of the Garden!
    • Growing your own TP is like printing your own money! The average person works two months of their life at a 40-hour job just to pay for the paper to wipe their butt.
    • Opt out of consumerism! According to one study, the average U.S. household of 2.6 people uses about 400 regular rolls of TP per year. Growing your own TP is one more step in breaking free from the consumer lifestyle.
    • We are flushing our planet down the toilet. We’re chopping down trees, burning fossil fuels, and polluting our waterways by pooping in clean water. The compost toilet and toilet paper plan are a step forward in living in harmony with Earth.
    • Wiping your butt with leaves is humbling. If yoga hasn’t humbled your ego enough yet, try these leaves.

How to share: 300 guides to help your community thrive

Which plants and why?

For warmer climates, like Florida, we recommend growing the Blue Spur Flower (Plectranthus barbatus). Why? Because it is one of the easiest-to-grow plants, it’s great for beginners. It can be grown in the ground or in pots, and it thrives.

If you’re not convinced, here are eight reasons why to use the Blue Spur flower:

• • 1. The leaves are very soft — softer than many toilet papers on the market.
    2. The leaves are strong and durable. (Your fingers will not break through when wiping.)
    3. The leaves often grow about the same size as a store-bought piece of toilet paper.
    4. On dewy mornings, these furry leaves hold onto moisture, so they double as a wet wipe.
    5. It is in the mint family (Lamiaceae), so it has a fragrant minty smell!
    6. The flowers attract hummingbirds!
    7. The leaves are used in Brazilian culture as tea for an upset stomach. (Not after using it on the bum of course!)
    8. The leaves can be harvested and last up to three weeks before use, retaining their softness, durability, and strength.

For areas with cold winters that freeze over, we suggest mullein (Verbascum thapsus), which has been used as toilet paper for hundreds of years, due to its large, soft, fuzzy leaves.

If you live in cooler climates, here are four reasons to grow Mullein:

• • 1. The leaves are some of the softest growing in the northern hemisphere, perfect for the sensitive spots of the body.
    2. Grows quite easily from seed.
    3. Prolific, self-seeding plant (once established), meaning your toilet paper supply will multiply.
    4. It’s an herbal medicine that millions of people work with.
    5. Drought tolerant, and does best in dry soils.

How to grow the Toilet Paper Plant*

• • • The Blue Spur plant is low maintenance and it doesn’t require highly fertile soil, needs minimal water, and we’ve rarely seen any insect damage except a few bites here or there.
    • The plant starts via a cutting. We provide cuttings of the plant to get started, which are simply a 6″-9″ cutting of one of the branches. These cuttings can then be planted in a small pot (such as a 4”x4” pot) to be nurtured for a few weeks to a couple of months until it has established roots and leaves. Then it can be transplanted in the ground or to a larger pot.
    • We’ve seen two 8″ cuttings grow into a 10-foot by 6-foot Toilet Paper Plant patch within a few years, while it was still being heavily used for both toilet paper and propagation.
    • Proper pruning will create a bushy plant that produces ample toilet paper for at least one person.
    • Once established, you can easily take cuttings from your own Toilet Paper Plant to plant more of it and provide cuttings to help others grow their own TP, too. Plant people know that plants create abundance, so much so that we have plenty to share with our communities.

*Additional instructions for growing Mullein can be found here (will be available 5/1/23). 

How to use the Toilet Paper Plants

Like any plant, some people may have an allergic reaction. Be safer than sorry, and before you try the leaves on your bottom, swipe the leaf across your hand or wrist, and wait 24 hours. If no reaction occurs, the leaf will most likely be safe to use on more sensitive areas (but it’s best to test that as well before regular use).

• • • Simply wipe your butt, and then have a plan for where you’re going to put the used leaves.
    • Our favorite plan is to use them with a compost toilet. Simply drop the leaves into any compost or dry toilet.
    • If you have a flush toilet, you can place a small bucket next to it for used leaves. Then take them outside and compost them or bury them in the yard. Having a bucket for used TP is a common practice throughout many regions of the world where the septic systems need more gentle care.
    • We have not experimented with flushing the leaves and our recommendation is to not flush them.

See Greenfield and the Toilet Paper Plant in person

Greenfield is taking his Toilet Paper Plant on a two-week tour of Florida from April 27th–May 9th, 2023. In each major city, Robin will set up his compost toilet and his plants on either side of him, to introduce this alternative, environmental way forward to all who are interested.

• April 27th: Gulfport from 5-8 PM SumitrA Espresso Lounge +, (2838 Beach Blvd S.)
• April 29t: St. Petersburg from 11 AM–2 PM Saturday Morning Market (at 1st St. entrance)
• April 30th: Tampa from 5-8 PM Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park
• May 3rd: Orlando from 5-8 PM Lake Eola Park (at N Osceola Ave & E Central Blvd intersection)
• May 4th: Daytona Beach from 11 AM-1 PM Ormond Beach Farmers Market
• May 4th: Jacksonville from 5-8 PM Downtown Jacksonville (exact location TBD)
• May 5th: St. Augustine from 12-2 PM Plaza de la Constitución
• May 5th: Gainesville from 5-8 PM Bo Diddley Plaza Plaza (Friday night concert series)
• May 6th: Fort Myers from 5-8 PM Downtown Fort Myers Library Plaza  (2450 First St)
• May 9th: Miami Beach from 5-8 PM Lincoln Rd & Alton Rd intersection

How to get your starter plants in the mail*

We have a Toilet Paper Plan for nearly every region of the United States. You can still request your Toilet Paper Plant: by making a sliding-scale suggestion donation to the initiative, and we will send you cuttings of blue spur flower, or seeds of mullein (depending on where you live), plus instructions to be successful in growing your own TP! Request plants in the mail here.

*Note, we do not sell plants. We are a non-profit providing resources to be of service to Earth, humanity, and our plant and animal relatives. The funds raised from this initiative support our food sovereignty initiatives. Learn more about Regeneration, Equity and Justice.

Additional Resources from Robin Greenfield:

• • • How to Compost – Composting Guide for Beginners
    • How to Compost Human Poop – Humanure Resources
    • 10 Ways to Wipe Your Butt for Free (alternatives to toilet paper)

Looking for more ways to share? Check out Shareable’s growing collection of over 300 how-to guides to save money, reduce waste, and build community through sharing.

The post How to grow your own toilet paper appeared first on Shareable.

For the past two months, France has been in a state of agitation. A growing movement of workers has been engaged in protests and strikes which erupted in Paris and other cities in response to President Emmanuel Macron unilaterally raising the French retirement age from 62 to 64. You may have seen the viral images of piles and piles of garbage bags out on the streets in Paris — this is because garbage collectors, like many other unions in the city, have been on a series of strikes to protest the new pension reform.

We spoke with Konstantin about the state of the movement and what it’s been like organizing and participating in the strikes, the long string of events that have led to this current uprising, why it’s more important than ever to build class consciousness and solidarity — not just in France but internationally, and where he sees this movement headed.

‘The French Uprising” episode credits:

• Host, producer, and editor: Robert Raymond
• Executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram and listen and subscribe with the app of your choice.

For a full list of episodes and resources to strengthen and organize your community, visit www.theresponsepodcast.org.

Download our free ebook: “The Response: Building Collective Resilience in the Wake of Disasters”

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