Keeping Things in the Loop: The Reykjavík Tool Library An Interview with Anna Worthington De Matos

Þýðing: Jóhannes Bjarki Bjarkason

In a space at Laugavegur 51, Anna Worthington De Matos has recently opened up the new headquarters of the Reykjavík Tool Library (Munasafn Reykjavíkur). The Reykjavík Tool Library, as the name suggests, is a library for all sorts of tools and equipment. Its storage shelves are cluttered with different contraptions, big and small, along with everyday items like camping chairs, guitar amps, and even an apple peeler.

Anna studied conservation and restoration of historic objects and buildings at Lincoln University in England. After working for independent contractors for a few years, she moved on to managing bars in the Peckham district of London. In the midst of Brexit, she first came to Iceland for a holiday, only to abruptly move here a month later. “I was extremely lucky, constantly, it’s really bizarre. I got to England and I had to tell my housemate I was moving out. We had been living together for three years and were really good friends, and he owned the flat. I was really nervous to tell him because we had agreed on giving each other three months’ notice and I was only giving him a month. I told him I was moving out. He was so relieved because he had just sold the flat. It worked out. When I got to Iceland I had nowhere to live. My friend’s mum went to Spain for six months so I had a place to stay! Everything just worked out and I felt that it was meant to be,” says Anna.

Crowdfunding at the hospital

How did you end up running a tool library in Reykjavík?

“I always had lots of tools in the UK. We had a garage at the bar I managed where we put tools for people in the neighborhood to borrow. It was quite nice,” Anna recalls. “[In Iceland] what happened was I couldn’t afford to buy tools. I then went looking to rent them and I couldn’t afford to rent them either.”

Anna enrolled in a course at NMÍ (The Innovation Center of Iceland). “It was an entrepreneurship course for women, where we tried to develop accessibility for people. When I was doing that course, I learned about tool libraries. Then I went to Toronto to meet with the guys from the Toronto Tool Library, who basically inspired me to do this. I went there at exactly the right time - it was environmental week, so there was a swap fair, a repair cafe, and the tool library was opening. Everything happened over like five days, and I was able to see all of it. It was super cool and I came back super inspired. Then I went straight to the hospital.”

After coming home from Toronto with her head full of ideas, Anna had to spend two weeks in the hospital. She managed to draft the initial plans of the Reykjavík Tool Library at the hospital, starting a crowdfunding venture on Karolina Fund.

“Your body is wrecked but your mind doesn’t stop. You need to get yourself doing something, otherwise you go a little bit crazy – you can’t really focus on being sick,” she says reassuringly.

“Two weeks later, when I came back from the hospital, we got the money from Karolina Fund. Then I kind of felt like I had to do it because people put money into it and you have to deliver what you promised. So we started looking for a location.”

Circular economics

Knowing few people in Iceland and not being able to afford the cost of buying or renting tools meant that Anna had to find a new way to access tools.

“When I arrived here I didn’t know many people, so to borrow things from people wasn’t the easiest. And I thought to myself, ‘Well, if I’m in this position, other people must be too.’” So the idea of opening a tool library was born.

“Then I started reading up on circular economies. It’s funny because circular economics is a big thing right now, but I learned about tool libraries before circular economies. I made it my job to learn more about it. The more I learned, the more I was convinced it was the way forward. But there is a big discrepancy between what a circular economy is and what people think it is. I think educating people on the topic is really important.”

Can you describe what a circular economy is and how you operate around the values it represents?

“A circular economy is an economic system that keeps things in a loop. So not just material things and resources, but also money. My view on [this system] is that it’s non-profitable, although there are people who think that they can profit from creating a circular system within their business. But what they are doing is greenwashing,” says Anna, adding, “A circular economy means that your business is, from beginning to end, circular. In the case of the Tool Library, people pay to become members. Tools come in, we fix and we clean them, we lend them out. The money that comes in is used to pay rent and wages,” she explains, giving me a crash course in circular economics. “There is no extra money left over, so there is no profitability in the system. But a lot of people believe that a circular economy can be profitable. I don’t doubt that parts of it can be made profitable, but I don’t believe that’s true circularity. You’re not keeping it in the loop, you’re taking it out. And every time you take something out of a loop, it shrinks. So I think the circular economy is an economic system where we use everything to its maximum capacity and we recycle and keep things in the loop as much as we can.”

The Reykjavík Tool Library doesn’t introduce a new kind of thinking into the Reykjavík ecosystem; rather, it reinvents the older concept of libraries. Given the clear and present catastrophes of climate change, the tool library’s circular economy model might be one solution to a complicated problem. Anna invites the community to take part in her work, and when the public health situation allows, there are plans to host Repair Cafés as well as an event for entrepreneurs focusing on circular economics.

LifestyleJóhannes Bjarki BjarkasonMarch 10, 2021