The Original Sharing Economy

At the Sharing Depot, a storefront in Toronto, $50 a year buys tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of tools, camping supplies, furniture, games, toys, sports equipment, and much else. At least on a short-term basis: The owners of the space call it a “library of things,” and anyone who pays the annual membership fee can borrow anything in the Sharing Depot, whose aisles look a lot like those at a regular big-box store. The difference is that everything on the shelves can be checked out like a library book.

Ryan Dyment, a co-founder of the Sharing Depot, explained that his business takes advantage of the fact that people own things they hardly ever use. “We’ve produced way more than what we need to live well,” Dyment says. “There are basements and garages full of stuff.” The Sharing Depot opened in 2013 and currently has more than 2,200 members.

Roughly a dozen stores around the world call themselves libraries of things, but unofficial sharing libraries are much more plentiful. According to Dyment, there are about 80 established in North America, to spread out the cost of using large machinery.