About us
Who
The Library of STUFF is a project of Mullum Cares Incorporated. A non profit organisation that was founded in 2016 to inspire and enable resource conservation in the Northern Rivers. You can see all things Mullum Cares at mullumcares.com.au.
From April 2017 – April 2024 we grew to be the busiest share library in the country with over 5000 loans per year in the 22/23 and then again over the 12 months April 23 to 24. Our hopes that growth in demand for loans would be balanced by a growth in members volunteering simply didn’t materialise and to add stress to the situation, the loans per membership doubled after the flood of Feb 2022 so we got busier but not more financial – giving out over 100 free flood memberships didn’t help our bottom line either. But we would do it all again without batting an eyelid.
We applied for funding to pay a co ordinator and a maintenance manager to allow the high demand to be safely met. Our impact figures weren’t believed. What a shock. What more could we do?
We have recalibrated our membership type and the operational sturcture of the Library to resemble a co operative model. All household members are now expected to be on the team that delivers the service. Serving each other and our non profit groups, organisations and local events who share our passion for minimising waste.
The landing page of the webiste houses examples of Active Member roles and tasks along with our catch all contact form. This is how you contact us – much better than rocking up at the Library or sending us a message via socials. Thanks for understanding – there’s not always a member on shift that can field enquiries and often the shift vollies are flat out serving members and ensureing the stuff is in great working order as it goes out and comes back in.
What
The Library of STUFF is a community library filled with good quality items that are shared amongst its members. We prioritise quality and repairability above all other considerations when purchasing new items. We are most pleased with our ability to buy and receive after sales support from Farmcare for gardening tools we have purchased. Their sales and after sales service is becoming a rare quality in a retail business.
The Library of Stuff operates on the traditional land of the Bundjalung Nation. We acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional custodians of this land, past, present and emerging, and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.
Where & When
The Library is located in the brick shed on the south side of the Mullumbimby Community Hall (formerly the Scout Hall) on River Terrace (behind the post office). Please see our home page for any disruption to these standard opening hours:
Collection and drop off hours:
Tuesday 8-10 am
Thursday 3-5pm
Occasional activities on Fridays and Saturdays. Check out our Instagram for upcoming events!
Why
The inspiration for the Library of Stuff name came from Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff mini documentary that details the detrimental effects of increasing consumption of low-quality consumer goods. These goods use materials extracted from the earth, some are finite, most are not renewing at the rate of extraction. These goods have a massive emissions impact from extraction to production to transport to disposal. These goods are often made by people who are not paid fairly and in countries who’s environmental protection rules are not as robust as Australia’s.
Borrow instead of Buy is the Library’s Call to Action. It asks members to forgo convenience for the benefit of others. Those others include the people whose lands are exploited to extract the raw materials, these people are often also exploited as western pursuit for ‘cheap’ drives manufacturers to scale the globe for places they can pay the least to the people needed to make stuff. After the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, pressure to improve working conditions for women sewing clothes resulted in a migration of manufacturing away from that region to places like Africa where the cost of increased safety measures wasn’t adding to the cost of labor.
Buy Better is our secondary focus. We connect members with the benefits of using better quality items whereever possible. When we buy we buy good quality and we strive to take great care of our items so once we decide they need to be moved on from a high use environment, a local person or group will be able to continue using the item for as long as possible.
Behaviour Works Roadmap to Circular Economy project has lots of great intel on the problem and solutions to over consumption and production of goods. Borrowing/Renting are the most impactful behaviours you can do to reduce the unsustainable waste of the planets finite resources. Here’s the one pager and all information about their project can be found at : https://www.behaviourworksaustralia.org/major-project/responsible-consumption-behavioural-roadmap-to-circular-consumption
Subscribe for Updates
It is imperative once you are a member that you receive and read our email communications. We send them less frequently than monthly so we wont overload your inbox! We post more regularly on Facebook and Insta if your into either of those platforms.
Our Impact
The Library has grown organically with very little promotion as we are constantly limitied by space and volunteer capacity. In 2021 we received a donation that allowed us to employ our Co Founder, Celine Massa, to work on Amplifying the Impact of our operation in order to demonstrate its benefits to the community and the environment. Two Impact Reports – see below – were produced by Celine with this funding which has now been exhausted.
We aspire to grow the initiative into a self sustaining operation that is financially capable of employing a permanent staff member. We are a way off this goal and reject the obvious solution which is to focus on growing our only source of income, membership fees. More members without more stuff would lead to reduced access to items and with the cost of square footage in the Byron Shire we are always restricted by physical space.
More work to investigate other income streams is underway with the University of Queensland assisting with the research. If you or someone you know is in the position to make a tax deductible donation to help us move closer to a position of financial viability please see our Donation tab for details. Money comes from selling things and our purpose being to encourage people NOT to buy but borrow instead presents a unique but obvious challenge to our plight.
Winner of Byron Shire's Community Initiative of the Year Award
On January 27 the Byron Shire Council announced it’s annual awards that included their Environmental Initiative of the Year Award which went to Bangalow Koala’s. The judges felt that the Library of Stuff must be acknowledged for it’s sucess and impact both environmentally and socially so they created a new category, the Community Initiative of the Year Award and awarded it to us!