children’s activities. This provides the opportunity to widen the impact of climate messages from individual learning to a community-wide conversation.
Across the country, libraries are already taking practical steps to support sustainability within their local communities. Some libraries, including Wandsworth, Harrow, Hillingdon and Richmond in London, now host small electricals recycling bins, making it easier for nearby residents to recycle electronic waste responsibly. A library manager in Wandsworth also told me that all library cards in Wandsworth, Bromley, and Greenwich are biodegradable and that their library will soon be intro- ducing food-waste compost bins to improve sorting of daily rubbish from both staff and visitors.
Alongside these operational changes, libraries are increasing- ly exploring hands-on ways to engage and educate their com- munities about environmental issues. CILIP’s Green Libraries Week is one example of how the sector is putting sustainability awareness on the agenda, with libraries across the UK running environmental workshops, sustainable craft activities, and eco-focused story sessions.
A case study: The Broken Umbrella Challenge Through my organisation, Science Owl, I’ve been collaborating with libraries across London to deliver hands-on sustainability and STEM workshops. Our flagship workshop, The Broken Umbrella Challenge, invites children and families to take apart broken toys and everyday items, then use the parts to invent something new. We source the broken items from local charity shops, who often struggle to deal with large quantities of un- sellable donated items.
The session begins by discussing how many toys are thrown away annually in the UK and the process of manufacturing toys, to give children a sense of the issue of waste. We talk about sustainability and carbon emissions in supply chains and then explore how circular design can help make products more sustainable. Children then take part in our hands-on ‘Invent with Waste’ challenge.
Children receive ‘salvage sets’, which are curated collections of discarded objects, and a ‘challenge card’ posing a creative problem, such as designing something for a park affected by litter. Families work together to disassemble the broken items, imagine a new creation, and build it. We encourage children to think like scientists and engineers and imagine themselves as climate problem solvers.
Since launching eight months ago, the programme has reached more than 1,000 children across 28 libraries in 11 London boroughs. The impact has been clear to both us and the libraries we partner with. Children love tapping into their creativity and you can see their sense of pride when they share their inventions with the group at the end of the session. The Library Service Manager at Ealing Libraries told us, “These were some of the best workshops we have hosted. Parents participated with their children and the whole family learned together.”
Another Library Manager described the atmosphere as “very creative – it motivated every participant to develop their own ideas and make something from materials they provided.” The feedback we have received has consistently highlighted how the workshops help families to see waste differently, starting conversations about sustainability, and strengthening the bond between libraries and their local communities. We are now looking at how we can roll out the programme nationally to be able to reach many more children across the country. The success of initiatives like the Broken Umbrella Challenge points to a bigger opportunity; partnerships between librar- ies and community organisations can turn climate learning into wider community climate action. Libraries already align naturally with local authorities’ environmental goals such as reducing waste and promoting greener living. By partnering
February-March 2026
with science communicators, educators, and local sustainability groups, libraries can amplify their impact.
As one library manager put it: “It was really easy to organise and very popular with the families that attended… The kids made some amazing new toys out of the broken parts and had a lot of fun showing them off.”
For libraries looking to expand their role in promoting solu- tion-focused climate education, forming collaborations with community partners can be really effective. Community partners bring in expertise, materials, and facilitation skills, while library staff provide the trusted space, local networks, and understand- ing of their audiences. These kinds of collaborations can create valuable educational opportunities in libraries to improve public understanding of climate issues.
Libraries have always been about more than reading books. They are repositories for shared knowledge and can facilitate social connections in local communities. With the climate crisis unfolding now, there is an urgent need for places where people can learn, reflect, and act together. Libraries already promote literacy – why not climate literacy too?
The climate crisis is a global issue, but it is also a local issue. Reimagined as climate classrooms, libraries can play a pivotal role in helping local communities explore, understand, and engage with climate learning and solutions.
About the author
Dr Renee Tonkin is the founder of Science Owl, an organisation that designs and delivers creative sustainability and STEM initiatives for children in libraries, schools, and at home. She has a PhD in Biomaterials from Imperial College, has been named as a Rising Leaders Fellow with the Aspen Institute, and her environmental education work has been featured on BBC One’s Sunday Morning Live. Renee is passionate about supporting libraries as community climate learning hubs. If you would like to connect or share your perspective, you can reach her at
renee@scienceowl.education or on LinkedIn. IP
References 1.
www.cilip.org.uk/page/trusted
2.
www.gov.uk/government/publications/annual-report-to-parliament-on-public-libraries-activities-from-april- 2023-to-march-2024/libraries-annual-report-202324
3. Olsen, E. K., Lawson, D. F., McClain, L. R., & Plummer, J. D. (2024). Heads, hearts, and hands: a systematic review of empirical studies about eco/climate anxiety and environ- mental education. Environmental Education Research, 30(12), 2131-2158. (
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504622.2024.2315572#d1e1963)
4. Yıldız, C.D. (2025). Raising Climate Heroes: Ecological Game Camp — A Mixed-Methods Study on Experiential Climate Education in Children and Adults. Sustainability, 17(17), 8043. (
www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/17/8043)
5. Baden, D. (2019). Solution-Focused Stories Are More Effective Than Catastrophic Stories in Motivating Proenvironmental Intentions. Ecopsychology, 11(4), 254–263. (
www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/eco.2019.0023).
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