It’s a wrap! Celebrating Green Libraries Week 2025

Blog series Knowledge Matters

Author Catherine Ross, Head of Sustainability

What a week! Teams all across the Library ran over 20 different workshops, talks, tastings and displays.

Public events included the launch of Stories from the Environmental Movement, as well as lectures on Print Culture in the Age of Climate Change, Romantic Ecology, and the lived history of air pollution. There were webinars on the circular economy and libraries and positive climate action, and we celebrated green businesses with our Start-up Stars event. There were coffee tastings and a sustainable food showcase from our caterers Graysons.

Staff events included sustainability roadshows, two major workshops (one on Climate, Community, and Creativity and one on Digital Sustainability), talks from our Oral History team and the Climate Reality Project, a show and tell of collection items from the Amazon, and a site tour of the measures we have taken to cut our carbon at our Boston Spa site.

It really showed how widely the Library is engaging with the topics of climate change, sustainability and nature loss in a wide variety of ways.

Discover new blogs and resources

Green Libraries Week saw the launch of a new topic guide on Digital Sustainability, written by one of our digital curators, and also a new theme within the BL shop, ‘Celebrate Sustainably’, which highlights a selection of books and gifts to help people embrace more sustainable lifestyles.

During the week, five short articles were published covering a fascinating variety of topics including:

• 'Unearthed: The Power of Gardening exhibition' in libraries across the UK – DCMS Libraries
• British Library decarbonisation: a new chapter in energy efficiency | Salix Finance
• Sustainable collecting: the big picture
• How past climate change policies have shaped Britain today
• Snails inspire

Sharing recordings of the day

Our Soud and Vision team shared recordings with colleagues each day which highlighted the relevance of our rich sound collection on issues around climate and nature: 

• Sounds of nature, the peewit, skylark, cricket, and the boom of the male bittern, rescued from near extinction in the UK
• Oral history recordings from a campaigner, regenerative farmer, climate modeller, and climate scientist.

Displays around the Library

Our displays continue to be on show at St Pancras: 

• Stories from a Sustainable Future display in the Entrance Hall at St Pancras (October-mid January) 
• Displays of sustainability-themed books and periodicals in the Science and Business & IP Centre Reading Rooms, St Pancras will stay open until 14 November.

Final reflections

Of course, the Library is working on environmental issues all year round, not just during Green Libraries Week.Read more in our full Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy (PDF, 4.3MB) or the four-page summary version of the strategy (PDF, 4.9MB). We continue to work on our four priorities; Our Places, Our Purposes, Our Partnerships and ‘Embedded in our Work’.

And finally, it’s great to remember we were just one part of a movement across the whole of the UK, led by CILIP and the Green Libraries Campaign, with libraries of all kinds taking part. It is a great example of a sector taking action, and we are proud to be part of it.