David Paynter On How The Circular Economy Strengthens Communities And Reduces Waste
David Paynter is the founder of the Gold Coast Tool Library, a fresh start up in the community sharing platform space.
Frustrated and deeply saddened by western society’s over consumptive habits, environmental destruction and ever-growing waste catastrophe, David called on his experience working in the charity and NFP sector and sought out a way to provide a tangible, grass roots working example of how anyone can reduce their impact on the planet’s finite resources. Embracing two of the circular economy’s business principals of sharing platforms and product life extension, he engaged with the local community to secure inventory items, gather a volunteer team and launched the Gold Coast’s first tool library.
Collaborating with other lending libraries around the country and internationally, David’s aim is to assist others on the similar start up journey and help replicate the library model in any community that desires their own library of things.
David discusses different methods for getting projects off the ground and establishing a social enterprise which successfully utilises the circular economy model.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Tom Allen] - To kick things off, let's talk a little bit about your background and what led you down the path of social enterprise and in particular your passion for the circular economy?
[David Paynter] - I've always had a strong connection to nature and the natural cycles that exist because everything in nature is circular by design. There's no such thing as waste in nature.
Waste is a construct of man, we invented waste, it is something you do, not something that is. There's a lot that we can learn from the natural cycles of nature and biomimicry, so connecting with nature I did a lot of volunteering and environmental projects through the years.
I was lucky enough to see a presentation by Professor Will Steffen talking about planetary boundaries and something really just clicked there. I was thinking, "why aren't we all operating from this mindset?" Then I discovered the SDGs, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and that is such a good framework to base your projects and where you're operating on. It's a good way to explain to people what's going on.
Then I started to explore social equity, the triple bottom line, and just how money as a force for good is so powerful, Especially in what we can do as consumers and business’ through making the choice of what we do with our money. We can change systems so much faster than what a government or your local regional council can do.
I did a stint working for youth charities and exploring social justice issues there. Then, I was fortunate enough to meet Jaine and Ashleigh Morris from Coreo early last year and I did their three-day circular economy master class and connected in with the Queensland Social Enterprise Council (QSEC) and our local chapter, and that is here on the Gold Coast. I have also been inspired by many people around me running social enterprises or circular economy principles in their business and learning every day.
That made me think, "okay, I want to do something that can help show our local community that these are tangible steps that anybody can take." This process is not difficult and together we can all make changes and help lead our world to a better place for us all to enjoy.
Tell us a little bit more about the Gold Coast Tool Library then? What is it, how does it operate and what are its aims?
As the name suggests, we are a library, and we are often called a library of things. We operate the same way as a lending library, but we lend hand and power tools. We also lend sporting goods, camping gear, musical instruments, sewing machine and some other really useful household items. Usually, they're things that you only occasionally use, but when you do need them, they're very useful (like a food dehydrator or a bread maker). Our premise is to pool the community's resources into a central hub where people can draw on them and borrow what they need when they need it.
[This is] rather than everybody having to have ownership of all these things, especially because everything we consume as we know has an energy debt associated with it [we dig resources out of the ground, chop down trees, make packaging and ship the product all around the world], and in a lot of situations the product doesn't get used very often.
It just sits in our cupboard or in our garage gathering dust or we bought the next newer later model.
There's the environmental benefits by cutting back on our over-consumption, because as a society in the Western world, if everyone lived like we live in Australia, it would take 4.2 Earths to sustain us. Our over consumptive habits are pushing past the acceptable planetary boundaries and we are heading for a future that is not very enjoyable if we continue on our current trajectory.
We want to pool those resources, cut back on our consumption and we can still have the enjoyment and access to the things we need, but only when we need them. The other part of our goal which is very important to us is there are a lot of people in our communities who simply just cannot afford to purchase these consumer goods and these items that they would like to have.
But, for the minimal cost of a library membership, they can come in and borrow five items every week and they are not locked out by the simple fact of lacking in dollars. There's a social equity around our resources as people who may not necessarily be able to buy these products can still borrow the family tent, some camping gear and a surfboard and go off on a big family holiday. Then next week, they can borrow the sewing machines as maybe they need to repair the kids school clothes. Then the following week they can come and buy something else.
Money shouldn't be an object to us as a community required for having access to our resources.
Those are two of the biggest goals that we hope to achieve through this community platform.
David, we met a few years ago now, and back then you were really at those initial planning stages of pulling this tool library together. It has been a real inspiration to watch you really push through a bunch of boundaries and walls to get to where you are today. From your experience, what do you believe are the fundamental ingredients for this longer-term success when running a community driven project?
I would say you need support from many. You and this podcast have been an inspiration by listening to what you have to say and listening to the great people that you have on your podcast. You need help from many people, and you can't do all of this yourself.
I would say gather a strong community and network around you. A lot of collaboration is required.
[Also], with community projects, it's not like a business in the way that you're not in competition with anybody, so the more you can gather and collect support from others who are maybe further along that journey than yourself or they've been there and done that [the better].
Gather some mentors, get support from community members and local businesses around you. We also need support from all three levels of government. Your local council level may potentially have that space you can operate from if you're fortunate enough, and we need the support from your state and federal governments with your bigger funding grants and finances, but also policies like social procurement. Dollars are obviously a fundamental ingredient for these community projects and there's a lot of ingenuity you can go into there. Crowdfunding was a great success for us at the beginning because we needed to raise the money from scratch to get our public liability and volunteering insurance before we could actually even start operating.
This is where social enterprises work so well, because you can actually use the funding which is generated through that business to power a community project or some other initiative which is doing good in the world.
I'd also say you need a healthy dose of stubbornness, tenacity and stoicism. It's a rollercoaster ride and when you're up, you're up and all these wonderful things come flowing to you. Then you dive down the other side and you hit that bottom where the universe seems to conspire against you and keeps kicking you down. That's where a bit of stoicism helps pull yourself together. Also, your team around you is there to help pick you up and get you going again, because you put your hand up and said, "hey, I'm going to do this."
You need to be able to pull yourself together and get back in and do that, and that's where a really good team and collaboration with the people around you helps, so the people within that team can play to their strengths. You can't do everything by yourself, even though you may have to wear many hats.
A good team around you is definitely what I would say is the biggest requirement to makes these types of projects sustainable for the long-term.
That's some great advice and you talk about these lows and the ability to push past them. Personally speaking then, what have been some of the greatest challenges in setting up the Gold Coast Tool Library, and how have you worked around them?
Probably our biggest challenge, and it's a challenge I've heard from many other libraries as well is finding the space to operate from. We can't afford commercial rent, and so we need to be finding a space on a peppercorn lease or collaborating/co-sharing with someone else.
Finding a space for us has been extremely challenging. Pretty much all avenues through council are exhausted as there are 30-40 community groups in the queue for every council space available. I then reached out to the private sector as I thought that has got to be the only solution that's available in the short term. I just tried to earmark and spot areas that I thought would be suitable and I just went and knocked on their doors and introduced myself.
I got a lot of no’s, a lot of no’s! But I also got a lot of feedback from people saying, "hey, that sounds like a great idea and I wish you the best of luck." It keeps you going and eventually you knock on the right number of doors and you find someone who agrees and aligns with what you're doing.
We started to find that there were a couple of vacant tenancies starting to appear because of COVID where travel agents and things were all closing up their doors. We nearly actually had two at the same time, in a retail establishment and then a real estate agent as they had some vacant space. The real estate agent had a bit of space adjoining their tenancy and this agent really embodied what we were all about, and so we are very fortunate now to have a pop-up space available, which is the greatest thing we need to make these community not-for-profit platforms work. Finances are also obviously a great challenge.
As I mentioned, the crowdfunding platform and getting the community together was our way to start-up and get functioning, and it was essential. Probably the other challenge, and this is not unique to us as it's across the board in not-for-profits, volunteer and charity spaces, is finding the ongoing volunteers to fill the roles you need.
There's been a bit of a shift and trend in volunteering where people like to come along, and they volunteer at an event or project and then move on to something else. Trying to find those long-term volunteers especially at the board level with the skillsets that you need is a little bit of a challenge, but nothing that's unique to us.
On the other hand, donations of items has not been a problem at all. The community has been extremely forthcoming with every single item in the inventory being donated by the community and those donations have just been flowing in. We've got some great gear in the library now, and that's all come from the generosity of the local community.
That's fantastic. What do you think there needs to be done to help accelerate this sharing economy movement and basically get mainstream society to move from this linear to circular economy?
The sharing economy movement is definitely gaining momentum in lots of different areas. You've got to get community buy-in, I think that's the first thing. There also needs to be a trust around the quality of what is there to be loaned. This is because everybody knows if I instead buy the item, I will look after it and the next time I go to use it or need it I know where it is (as it's in my cupboard or it's in my garage). I also know the quality is there, so that trust needs to be there.
I think also to the offering, it needs to be better than what's currently there because to get people to shift you've got to offer them something that's better than what they're doing. That can be something more efficient, the sharing option could be more flexible, easier, better valued or there's more environmental benefits.
[This is] specially with our younger generations that are looking to see conscious companies who have a purpose behind their businesses, so the money they're paying you is going somewhere positive. I think there can be a little bit of a stigma or a belief that borrowing is the poor man's option, and we need to move past that because it might've come from the days where only poor people caught a bus, because if you were wealthy, you had a car, or if you were really wealthy you had a chauffeur that drove your car for you.
It's shifting that mindset that sharing is actually a good thing to do. It's great for our environment, it's great for our community cohesion, networking and the ability to share resources is the future. It's just that shift of mindset away from I need to own everything too it's okay to collaborate and share our resources.
I think it's also maybe a little bit of a generational shift. If we go back to our grandparents changing from their great grandparents that was a big pivot, but then we have gone through the baby boomer era and myself as a child of a baby boomer where societal worth was based on how many goodies and items we had in our possession. I think as we move as a generation and as our Gen Y’s and Z’s become older and more mainstream into the decision-making processes of influence, we'll find that it naturally flows through.
That's a great insight there David, so thanks for sharing that. Moving on a little bit to some other inspiring projects or initiatives, which ones have you come across recently that are creating some really positive social change?
Probably talking about the same theme of waste aversion (which is a passion of mine), The World's Biggest Garage Sale with Yasmin, Lee, Donna and the team there in Brisbane have been doing some amazing things in reactivating dormant goods in their circular economy precinct.
They've done wonderful partnerships with one of the major chains of stationery and office goods and keeping items out of landfill and getting them back into society for use. They've done some great work through COVID there too, whereas a lot of other businesses have been winding down they've being scaling up and they're now employing quite a number of young people who were struggling with finding their place in the world. They're doing really well with that group of young people there. Yasmin and her team have been really inspiring to me with what they've been doing. The other ones I'd say are like Reverse Garbage, they're in Brisbane and they're intercepting industrial discards and high-quality waste.
What is one person's waste is actually proving to be a resource for other people and they do some really good stuff with education, especially in early education to explain the concept of what is waste and where does it come from, why do we have it and how can we not have waste?
Amazing stuff there.
They've also been doing it for years!
I think it has been like 20 odd years they've been operating there. They're a worker owned co-op doing some really good and impressive things there. Those are a couple of community organisations that I really identify with and have found inspiring on my journey.
To finish off then David, tell us about some inspiring books, web pages or blogs that you'd recommend to our listeners?
I tend to bounce around a bit and do lots of different pieces, but on my bedside table at the moment is the book Drawdown by Paul Hawken, and a lot of your listeners would probably be familiar with that one. That's a really good book because you can just pick it up, thumb through it and just pick out a section and read about scalable working examples of how we can really make a difference in scaling back carbon emissions, social equity justice and environmental issues through some amazing solutions.
If you're feeling a little bit down you can pick that up, have a read and then feel good about the possibilities in the world. I've also just been starting to explore with Kate Raworth on Doughnut Economics, because that picks up the whole planetary boundaries and also the whole social and economic theories.
There are some really good things there, and this is what I probably needed 20 odd years ago when my economics professor at university would be frustrated when I was asking questions and I didn't have the correct terminology back then to explain what I was trying to say. There is some great stuff there in her work as well.
