Community Tools Library Rebuild & Launch

Challenge

The Community Tool Library uses a membership approach to borrowing items required for DIY tasks. It enables the local community to access what is often expensive equipment to complete simple DIY in the home. The aim is to reduce waste whilst providing a valuable service to the community. However, to set up a tool library Rebuild required a good stock of equipment which could be loaned out and somewhere safe and secure to store it all.

Solution

Our teams volunteered their time and expertise to help prepare the Community Tools Library for its grand opening as part of the Great Big Green Week 2023 and we donated tools and equipment, so it was ready to use straight away.

A team of 14 from Sunbelt Rentals joined Morgan Sindall and All Together Cumbria over the course of five days to prepare the site. Together we worked on getting two cabins ready for launch, which we helped donate. The cabins, including fit of electrics, spray painting and delivery cost thousands of pounds and Rebuild used a funding grant they received from Vinci Foundation to cover some of the costs with Sunbelt Rentals covering the rest.

One cabin is for storing the tools so we inserted racking systems inside. The other is to be used as a training area for running DIY community sessions, so we kitted it out for this purpose.

We cladded the cabins so they fit well into the surroundings, washed and cleaned hundreds of boxes donated to store each individual tool in, jet washed all the floors and stocked all of the tools, with 50 of them being donated by Sunbelt Rentals.

We encountered extreme heat on a few of the days and to ensure all volunteers could continue safely and comfortably we arranged for our climate control team to deliver four evaporative coolers on site within a matter of hours.

Results

The Community Tool Library successfully launched with over 100 tools in stock, with members signing up straight away. The impact was instantly felt with one customer explaining how they could not afford the tools required to tidy up their garden for their children to play in, but thanks to the Tool Library they can now make it nice for summer.

Emma Porter, Co-Founder, The Rebuild Site CIC said “The addition of the tool library not only compliments what we are already doing at Rebuild but it gives even more people the independence to undertake their own home projects and introduces more people to sustainability in construction. Without the donation from Sunbelt Rentals, we wouldn’t have had a strong enough inventory to properly open when we did. And without your army of volunteers coming to help we wouldn’t have been ready for opening day A great big thank you from all of us.”

Sarah MacGregor, Head of Social Impact at Sunbelt Rentals said, “We are incredibly proud of our work supporting Rebuild. The vision and drive of the CIC is amazing and to be a part of its journey, helping the team realise their aspirations and have such a huge impact on reducing waste whilst giving back to the community is inspiring. The work Rebuild carry out aligns perfectly with Our Planet strategy and together, we have already been shortlisted for two awards which is testament to the value the CIC is delivering and the work of all the partners helping it.

The awards that the collaborative partners have been shortlisted for at the Constructing Excellence Awards 2023 is in the Innovation category and in the Sustainability category. Making the finals is such an achievement.”