by Laurie Lingham ·
Friday, May 8, 2026
In honor of Earth Day last month, the staff at the Harvard Public Library put together a list of ways you can consume less by using your public library more. We have so much more than books. Why own and store things in your home when you can borrow them instead? Here’s our Top Ten list of how to consume less with the help of your public library.
Instead of buying the following items or services, consider obtaining them at the library:
1 Books
32 million trees are felled each year in the United States to make paper for books. If you plan on reading a book just once, borrow it! If we don’t have it, there is a chance that we can get it from another library in our network, C/W MARS. C/W MARS calculated that using interlibrary loan last year saved 18,487 gallons of gas in lieu of patrons driving to other libraries to borrow the books in person.
2 Board games and puzzles
We have more than 100 puzzles of all levels of difficulty and more than 130 board games, including giant Jenga, cornhole, Kan Jam, ladder ball, and pickleball equipment. Consider checking out a game and hosting a board game night with your friends! Borrow a challenging puzzle for your next family gathering.
3 Gardening tools
Instead of owning tools that you use only a few times a year, borrow them instead. The Harvard Conservation Commission donated some tools to the library to educate and to provide resources for invasive species management, including the very popular weed wrench. If you’ve never experienced its magic or that of an “assassin” shovel, check them out.
4 Library of Things
There is more in our Library of Things than just games, puzzles, and gardening tools. We also have a pressure power washer, ukulele, Kill A Watt kit, metal detector, glasses to correct colorblindness, and a bubble machine, to name just some of the treasures in the collection.
5 Printing
Owning and replacing ink cartridges on individual home printers is costly in two ways. Disposable cartridges have a high environmental cost as well as a high retail price. It is much better for our community if we share a printer. Consider printing at the library instead. You can print black-and-white copies for 10 cents a page and a color copy for 20 cents. The library is a lot cheaper and a lot closer than Staples.
6 Seeds
We have more than 50 varieties of seeds in our very popular seed collection, ready for the 2026 planting season.
7 Custom textiles and more
Did you know that you can create a custom T-shirt or sweatshirt using our Cricut? Bring your design and work with a staff member to digitize it, print it, and then iron it on. And the Cricut can make personalized vinyl decals, custom stickers, home organization labels, and more. Bring your vision and talk to our staff to see if it can be made in-house.
8 Events
We host lectures, story hours, movie nights, concerts, workshops, book groups, and more. In 2025 alone, the library offered 457 live, on-site programs, all free!
9 Air conditioning
On those hot days of summer, come to the library and share the air conditioning instead of cooling your own home as much. Bring your laptop and find a quiet place to work or enjoy a comfy chair and a good book.
10 Book Sale
We get it—it is nice to own books. It feels good to have books in our homes. Instead of buying new books, come to the Friends of the Library annual book sale May 9 and 10 and buy a used book. Beware, it’s hard to buy just one.
Laurie Lingham is a member of the Harvard Library Trustees.