Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.06.2018, Side 68

60 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 09 — 2018
Let’s assume you’ve just bought a new
hairdryer. It works perfectly until, two
weeks later, it stops working all of a sud-
den. You get angry, and you‘re tempted to
just throw it away—but stop right there!
Very soon, there’ll be a much
better option: become part of
Reykjavík’s first tool library.
DIY-woman
Anna Carolina Worthington
de Matos is a craftsman by
trade and trained in conser-
vation and restoration of his-
torical buildings and objects.
While living in London, she
made surfboards as a hobby
and hoped she would be able to continue
doing that when she moved to Iceland.
But she was hit by the harsh economic
reality. “When I left London, I sold every-
thing I had which included a lot of tools,”
she says. “Then as soon as I arrived, I was
looking to source tools and they were
ridiculously expensive—something like
10,000 ISK per day for a hand sander.”
As she looked for a solution, one of
her friends suggested to her that she
could just open a tool library. “I did a
technological course for women entre-
preneurs in Iceland in December,“ Anna
remembers. “That's when I
started creating the idea of
a tool library.”
W hen Anna is not
thinking about tools, she
is making chocolate at Om-
nom. “I got the job there be-
cause I sent them an email
where I offered to make
them Brazilian truffles—if
they offer me an interview,”
Anna laughs. “They offered
me an interview, I made
them truffles, and I got the job.”
Going all Robin Hood
So how does a tool library work? There
are two main options: you can buy ei-
ther a “tool newbie” membership that
gives you access to tools for a shorter
period of time, or you can buy a “tool
pro” membership which allows you to
borrow more expensive tools for a longer
period of time. Since the goal of a tool
library is to make tools available for as
many people as possible, there will be a
third option: the so-called “Robin Hood”
membership. This will enable you to get
a tool pro membership for yourself, but
also to donate a membership to someone
in the community who cannot afford it
themselves.
Even though it won’t be possible to
rent a tool without buying a member-
ship, the price will be much lower than
renting tools in other places. “You sign
up a contract with me that says that
you're going to give back the tools the
same condition you got them in,” Anna
explains. “If you break them, bring them
back and we'll fix them.” Any profit will
go directly into lowering membership
costs, buying better tools and fixing the
ones that are broken.
Linear vs. circular
economy
“We're trying to stop this whole world
that we have going on of just throwing
things away that can be fixed,” Anna
explains. Instead of buying new things
whenever something breaks, the repair
café, which will be part of the tool library,
will focus on fixing broken things and
re-using them—creating a so-called
“circular economy”.
“We’re trying to create a community
where people can share their skills,”
Anna continues. “At repair cafés, people
get together and repair stuff that's bro-
ken, like toasters and hairdryers. We can
also sew some clothes that have holes
in them. Since we do it together, we’ll
benefit from each other’s skills.”
Growing together, one tool
per person
Right now, Reykjavík Tool Library is try-
ing to raise money through crowdfund-
ing. If it is successful, the tool library will
be able to afford a bigger space and will
host workshops on crafting. “It will be
a place where people can just come and
use the space to create,” Anna says. “If
they want to do some work but they don’t
have the place to do it, they can just come
here, break some wood, make a mess and
not have to be too concerned about it.”
A fundraising gig will be held at the
DIY venue R6013 on June 28th. The en-
trance fee is one tool per person. “We're
also gonna have a donation box for the
bands, you can give them some money if
you think they deserve it. And you give
us a tool,” Anna explains. “A DIY venue,
music and tools—it’s perfect.”
A room full of tools
Anna also went to visit the Toronto Tool
Libraries, which—in her opinion—are
some of the best examples out there.
“They opened three tool libraries in five
years,” she says. “It’s amazing. They have
donations coming in on a daily basis to
the point that they sent me a box full of
tools last week.”
Further donations, mostly from pri-
vate citizens, have also been collected.
“My room looks like a tool shed,” Anna
chuckles. “I have to move the tools else-
where to be able to sit down.”
After months of preparation, the
tool library is finally set to open in ear-
ly August in Grandi—Reykjavík’s fast-
developing ex-industrial harbour area.
The aim is to build a community that is
based on sharing, while also minimising
waste. “The more we share, the more we
have,” Anna smiles.

The More We Share, The
More We Have
Reykjavík’s first tool library is set to open this August
This lady has a whole lotta tools
“The aim is
to build a
community
that is based
on sharing,
while also
minimising
waste.”
Words:
Phil Uwe Widiger
Photos:
Art Bicnick