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Let’s face it – Christmas shopping can feel like a bit of a nightmare. Endless crowds, mountains of wrapping paper, and gifts that’ll probably end up gathering dust in a corner. At ETL, we’re here to shake things up this festive season! What if we could give gifts that actually mean something? Gifts that don’t just bring a moment of excitement, but make a real difference to people and our planet. We originally published this guide in 2020, and have updated it to share a fresh collection of sustainable present ideas that prove you can be kind to your loved ones and kind to the environment at the same time. We’re talking about gifts that spark joy, reduce waste, and might just help save the world (ok, maybe that’s a bit ambitious, but you get the idea…).

1. Gift some greenery

Seeds, seedlings or plants brighten up every home and are also brilliant air cleaners!

2. Gift your time

Whether you’re a whizz at fixing bikes, a gardening guru, or just really good at helping someone tackle that DIY project they’ve been putting off, your skills and attention are worth more than any store-bought present.

Tooligan Cécile says: “I love giving a declutter-your-wardrobe/home voucher. It’s simple: I come for a day and help the gift recipient with their decision fatigue! This you keep, this you give, this you recycle…”

3. A race entry

The perfect gift for all the runners and cyclists in your life! And it gives them something to look forward to – we all need it!

4. A gift voucher for a tattoo

It’s a gift for life! There are many talented tattoo artists + you can even ask for an Edinburgh Tool Library design 😉

5. ETL membership (or classes)

Tool Library memberships make excellent gifts! Who doesn’t want to get 2000+ tools and two workshop spaces in their stockings. Buy an ETL gift card today.

6. The gift of knowledge

The perfect gift can be found at the other beloved libraries in our community: borrow a curated selection of books on a theme that you know the person will love. 

7. Gift your recipes 

Forget fancy kitchen gadgets and single-use cookbooks. What about sharing a collection of tried-and-tested recipes that help people cook delicious meals while reducing food waste? Create a personalised recipe collection that goes beyond just ingredients—include tips for using up leftover vegetables, ways to transform sad-looking produce into something magical, and tricks for storing food to make it last longer.

8. Gift something handmade

Handmade presents are the ultimate sustainable superheroes—each one tells a story, saves resources, and shows you’ve invested real thought and effort.

Tooligan Sarah says: “I have made several big batches of chutney to give as gifts this year – pretty easy to do, lasts a long time in the fridge and is good for the type of person who has everything already. I had never tried making my own chutney until recently and I don’t know why, its pretty easy and much tastier than shop bought!”

9. Gift a playlist

A carefully curated playlist is the ultimate zero-waste present that costs nothing but time and creativity. This isn’t just about throwing together some random tracks—it’s about crafting a musical journey that speaks directly to your loved one.

10. (Another!) Sharing library membership 

A membership to a local sharing library is more than a gift—it’s an invitation to join a community that values access over ownership.

Tooligan Ed says: “I love giving a library membership, be that tools, board games, bikes, toys, musical instruments… there are lots of libraries!”

*. phs WasteKit blog: ‘How much waste does the festive seasion create’

Hello Jess! You’ve been volunteering with us for a few years now! How did it all start?

Back in 2018 or so, I had some free time (what a feeling!) and was looking for a volunteering opportunity. As a keen maker and craftsperson (though primarily with textiles rather than wood) I’d been a member of the tool library for around a year and had taken part in a couple of classes, so I signed up to volunteer. At this point I had grand ambitions of becoming a woodworking genius, but very little skill to speak of – my aim was to help out on the admin side of things, and learn more about woodworking as I went. I started off with processing the lending and borrowing of tools, and gradually progressed to helping out at the open workshop sessions. 

How are your woodworking skills coming along?

I wouldn’t say my visions of woodworking mastery have wholly materialised, but I am staggered by how much I’ve learnt from other volunteers and members. I now run inductions in the Portobello workshop, monitor open sessions, and occasionally help out at workshop week classes – I’m hoping to lead one myself some time soon. 

Why is volunteering with us important to you?

What started out as a way to fill some spare time and practise my woodworking skills has become a fierce passion. I volunteer because I passionately want sharing libraries to exist and to be affordable, community run services. If you’re considering volunteering, I can’t recommend it enough. 

My woodworking skills have come so far through being in the workshop – As a volunteer, I give members advice on their woodworking projects, but I also learn a huge amount from other volunteers and from our members themselves. There’s rarely one sole way to approach a build, and hearing suggestions from other volunteers and members has taught me dozens of new techniques. I’m constantly inspired by the incredible things our members come in and make – most recently, a pitch perfect marimba!

Volunteering brings me a sense of fulfilment away from my daily 9-5, and not just because it’s a break from a computer screen; I am actively choosing to give my free time to a project I believe in. That feels amazing.

How do you see the future of sharing libraries?

Sharing libraries give people an incredible opportunity to try new things. I am an absolute craft fiend – knitting, sewing, woodworking, you name it. But the cost barrier to trying a new skill like this can be high. Sharing libraries lower that cost barrier significantly: if I want to try dressmaking, I can borrow a sewing machine without having to fork out £200 before I know if I enjoy it. 

I can’t wait for sharing libraries to appear in every community. I can’t wait to see how existing sharing libraries evolve and grow their services to suit their communities. A library of things in Vancouver has storage containers across their local community where members can help themselves to items! Here in Scotland, an outdoor adventure kit library is in the works in Oban. I am involved in establishing a board game library here in Edinburgh, which will give members an opportunity to try board games – another item where the cost can be prohibitive – before they buy them (We launched in February, visit our website to find out more!). The future of sharing libraries is bright – get involved!

What would you say to someone who is considering becoming a member of the Edinburgh Tool Library?

Do it, DO IT now! While the tool lending and borrowing is the core service, I would thoroughly recommend also getting involved in the open workshop sessions. There is no substitute for walking in with no woodwork skills, or not having used a saw since school, and walking out with your very own bookend which you made with your very own hands. Craft and making can be an incredibly powerful way to both improve your own mental health (look at me, learning new things!) and to remind yourself of how much work goes into the products we often buy without thinking. A beautiful handmade end-grain chopping board from etsy might seem expensive, but trying to make one yourself can help to realise how many hours of skilled labour go into it, and put the price into perspective. This can, in turn, lead to more conscious consumption. 

Totally. Can you tell us more about the conscious consumption part?

I see tool libraries as filling a particularly interesting intersection between something that is ardently needed, and something which brings endless joy. We all know we need to change our lifestyles in response to the climate crisis, and many of the solutions are things we need to give up; We need to fly substantially less, cut red meat from our diets, turn down the heating, etc…

This common negative framing is partly of course a mindset issue – we focus on the things we need to deprive ourselves of, rather than the opportunities that that change provides (and of course, we can still have incredible holidays without flying, delicious meals without meat, etc.).

But to me at least, tool libraries are an especially exciting and positive solution: Yes, there is an element of deprivation – tool libraries are about cutting consumption, after all but a service where I can borrow the tools I need and save the money I’d spend on them? And not have to worry about where to store a lawn mower, or a wallpaper stripper, or a sewing machine, or a 3D printer? And a hub where you can go and use a community workshop space, share knowledge and help each other out, and take classes to learn new skills? Am I the only one who thinks this is the best thing in the world?!

Anything else you want to add?

If you know me in real life, you’ll have heard me wax lyrical about sharing libraries. I am so proud to volunteer for the UK’s first tool library, and I am thrilled by the drastic rise in sharing libraries of all kinds across the country. According to Circular Communities Scotland, there are now over 30 sharing libraries in Scotland, including at least a dozen tool libraries, as well as a musical instrument sharing library, a seed library, and a library of party items. These projects give me hope for the future. A future where sharing is the norm – not just through formal sharing library schemes but also increased sharing through informal networks in neighbourhoods and friendship groups. In the coming years, I can’t wait to see – and be part of – the future of sharing libraries!

Thank you Jess for your superduper volunteering contribution and for sharing your passion and inspiring journey with us today. BIG love to you!

A Scottish Network for Share and Repair: What does it all mean?

Last year, during COP26, the Scottish Government made a very exciting announcement. They, alongside Zero Waste Scotland, were funding a national network to support the expansion of the number of sharing libraries (tool libraries, but also other things like musical instruments, toys, games, “things”) and repair cafes in a project led by Circular Communities Scotland. At ETL, we were giddy with excitement, but why? Well let us explain to you!

A much needed network 

As the first tool library in the UK, ETL has been approached by a ton of folks over the years. As we have developed our understanding of what we are doing, often by making mistakes initially, we have realised how valuable that information is to other groups on the same journey. We have passed on excess tools, visited and hosted other groups (Community Learning Exchange is a great small grant resource to cover the associated costs), taken phone calls and Zoomed with people all across the world, from Glasgow to Ghana, Aberdeen to Adelaide.

Sharefest

The idea of a network has long been talked about, and in October 2019 we met in London with a group of around a dozen organisations from across the UK for “Sharefest”. Plans were made to continue an annual meet up, but then we had a big pandemic-shaped spanner in the works… But that’s when we’ve proven to be resourceful, one of our core values!

Talking to others builds resilience

What did happen after ShareFest, was that established libraries embraced virtual opportunities and kept meeting up every few months online to support each other and talk through how each group was handling the pandemic. We shared policies and procedures and compared notes with how we were all keeping our members safe. This simple support network was invaluable throughout the pandemic.

At one of our regular meetings, we noticed a massive duplication of work, where we were all receiving the same emails from the same groups, asking the same questions, and then all responding. Who provides your insurance? How do you stay financially sustainable? How often do items don’t come back (surprisingly to many people, it’s very unusual: 3 times in 22,000 loans at ETL) and can we look at your policies and procedures?

ETL joined with Share Oxford and Plymouth’s Borrow Don’t Buy to offer regular opportunities for UK-based start-up libraries to quiz us for an hour in our regular “FAQ session”, which got things sorted quickly, and also built an initial feeling of being part of something in the new libraries.

Scottish interest rates at an all time high!

At this point, ETL became a member of Circular Communities Scotland and, as a new member, were invited to speak at a network meeting. This generated a lot of interest and at the next UK-wide FAQ session we ran, all participants were Scottish-based third sector organisations. After discussions with Circular Communities Scotland, they agreed to start facilitating Scottish sharing library specific meetings, beginning in late 2020. As well as the quarterly Circular Communities Scotland hosted meet ups, we followed up individually with nine of the twelve initial groups, and asked them to describe how they envisaged some sort of support network taking shape.

CCS and The Edinburgh Remakery

Through the interviews with these Scottish sharing libraries we were able to start sketching out what a network might look like and began working alongside Circular Communities Scotland, developing a proposal to the Scottish government and Zero Waste Scotland to build a recognised, funded and supported network to enable the sharing economy to thrive in Scotland. We approached the team at The Edinburgh Remakery about bringing their repair expertees to the table to support the repair side of the network, doing similar things to support the proliferation of the repair cafe model across the country. 

The idea of the Scottish Share & Repair network became clear 

– To distill the expertise in the sector to reduce duplication of effort
– To amplify the voices of its members
– To look at opportunities for collective bargaining
– And finally, a network needs to network too!

Thankfully the Scottish government and ZWS could see the need, and the potential benefits of this network, and were happy to announce a £300k+ package of support at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021. The particulars are being codesigned and there is now a member of staff, Emma Erwin, who has been appointed to lead the network (Emma@circularcommunities.scot).

(SEPTEMBER 2022: the network has now its own website: shareandrepair.scot with all the info you need!)

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What is a repair cafe?

So you know what a tool library is – it’s like a library, but with tools. Well, a repair cafe is a meeting space where people bring their stuff to get it fixed and have a cuppa while the repair happens. It’s not rocket science (although some of the boffins might actually be able to fix a rocket).

Models differ, but generally there are teams of volunteers with expertees in fixing different things, and they want to do the fixing WITH YOU, not for you. Common things fixed are electrical items, clothes, furniture, bikes, toys and much more. 

We are keen to start hosting repair cafe events at ETL this summer, so stay tuned to this space, and if you’re a fixer, or an organiser, then do get in touch.

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100 new sharing libraries and repair cafés for 2025

The target of the new network is to have over 100 sharing libraries and repair cafes in Scotland (currently 25) by the end of the three years of initial funding, cementing Scotland’s status as a trailblazer in the sharing economy.

This has the potential to give thousands more people access to equipment and skills to live in a more sustainable, circular way, whilst saving communities millions of pounds.

We can’t wait to meet you! 

Anyone can start a repair cafe or a sharing library. The point of this network is to support charities and social enterprises to add value to their community offering via a repair café or sharing library project, as well as to support local people and communities to start from scratch! 

These different groups have different lived experiences and different resources available to them, but both need help, and that’s what the network is there to provide.

With funding now in place to cover the time of organisations like ETL to help, everything comes back full circle, and it’s the reason why we are really excited about the Scottish Share & Repair Network. It is an opportunity to share our expertees and our passion, and to be part of comprehensive support for other groups in a much longer term way, adding what we know about sharing to what community-based organisations know about their community.

When people ask for more help, we can say “yes”!

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I want to start…

…a sharing library!

First you can check out our dedicated page for a few hot takes on starting a tool library and our contact details if you are interested in a Community Learning Exchange visit.

• If you are based in Scotland, you should reach out to Emma Erwin, the newly appointed Network Coordinator at emma@circularcommunities.scot and you’ll be invited to join any upcoming calls.

• If you are based in Wales, we recommend you to reach out to Benthyg, the Welsh national network or sharing libraries.

• If you are based in England or Northern Ireland, please feel free to get in touch and we will pass your details on to the UK Sharing network that is in its early stages. Whilst ETL is an active part of the UK group, the Scottish Share & Repair Network funding is Scotland specific. We are pushing for a similar body to cover other areas of the UK too (Scottish and Welsh libraries are welcome to connect with the UK group).

…a repair café!

• If you are based in Scotland, you should also reach out to Emma Erwin, (Emma@circularcommunities.scot) and you’ll be invited to join any upcoming calls.

• If you are based in Wales, you can contact Repair Cafe Wales.

• And do have a look at the Repair Cafe Network amazing online resource, this will support you to establish one anywhere in the world!