The Northern Arizona Climate Change Alliance and the Sedona Public Library are collaborating on a new community effort: Sedona Tools Empowering People, a tool lending library consisting of donated tools that allows those working on projects who might be in need of a tool they don’t have to borrow it through an online interface and pick it up from a STEP volunteer at the library.

“We started our efforts in 2021,” Sedona organizer Peggy Chaikin said. “We had COVID strike and we also had some organizational changes that happened … We had to reassemble our volunteer force. You know how Sedona is. People are here and there, we have snowbirds … It’s part of an effort that came out of Jim Gale and myself. And we had an intern from [Northern Arizona University] who did a research project on it.

“We applied for a grant from the city and got some money to do an iteration of it, which has changed over this time. Now we’re starting the wheels rolling again for it.”

Another reason for the delay was obtaining liability insurance, which Chaikin said “took a long time. But there is a big network of tool lending libraries around the world and in our country. There’s quite a good network for getting information. That’s been really helpful.”

The tool library currently consists of around 230 tools of various kinds. The inventory includes a sewing machine, tamale pot, camp stove, shop vacuum, apple picker, shovels, rakes, screwdrivers, hammers, sanders and booster seats. Certain items, such as radial saws, will not be included for insurance reasons. Instead, Chaikin explained, the volunteers hope to build community so that additional personto-person sharing can take place outside the tool library as well.

“Say somebody has a cement mixer,” Chaikin suggested. “We don’t have space for a cement mixer … It’s really a lot about relationship-building. Getting to meet each other and getting to trust that the person will be returning the tool in good shape, and you can learn how to use the tool from us.”

Volunteers are still working on organizing the tools, rebuilding the STEP website and Facebook page, collecting more donations and preparing tool kits. Smaller tools will be offered as part of sets of related tools with instructions that can be used to complete single projects. Prospective borrowers will need to agree to the program’s rules and sign a liability release.

Chaikin estimated on March 8 that the program might be ready to launch for users in another six weeks or so. STEP may hold a courtyard event at the library to introduce the program to the community, provide information on what it offers and even accept further donations of tools.

“It really does fit into the kind of dynamic we have here, with older people having many tools and people who maybe can’t afford tools or don’t have space for tools and wanting to do a project, not taxing them with buying tools and then tools ending up underused or going to the landfill eventually,” Chaikin said. “It’s educational, so people can learn how to fix things instead of discarding things, or have home projects … We can eventually have workshops or fix-it clinics, involve the youths, involve the teenagers that are going to be having a one-day half day, can come over and help us out. It’s going to be cross-generational, hopefully.”

STEP is intended as an implementation of a circular economy, a system of production and consumption designed to reduce waste and pollution by minimizing both total resource use and inputs of new resources.

“A circular economy is reusing things, not wasting them or not discarding them, so they have less of a footprint in many ways,” Chaikin said. “It takes a lot of energy to make a screwdriver, but you can easily put it in the trash. Or, as I noticed in my neighborhood, somebody had a dumpster come and it was loaded up with all of the possessions from the deceased … We need to be relying on each other more, and relying on fixing things, because life is more challenging these days for a lot of people.”

Circular economies are also highly sustainable, since they correspond to economist Elinor Ostrom’s definition of sustainability as the local production and recycling of all essential resources in a closed cycle that can be sustained indefinitely, which can be established when resource users make decisions on resource allocation through democratic consensus in the absence of government intervention.

“Our library is moving in that direction, to provide things to people beyond books,” Chaikin said. “It’s the best example.”

“We change lives,” SPL director Judy Poe said last spring of the library’s growing community involvement. “We do the things that people need.”

“Some habits are good to keep and some habits are not beneficial to us at this point,” Chaikin summed up. “The habit of being wasteful is not useful. And it’s not a good example to young people.”

Those interested in learning more about the program can visit step.myturn.com or contact Chaikin at step.tool. library@gmail.com.