Tag: co-op

Business Co-Operatives Get Greener

  • Gary Alperovitz says co-op businesses are rooted to the community, and that gives the Evergreen Cooperative a long term customer base.(Photo courtesy of Julie Grant)

Many people think the idea of business co-operatives is a leftover from the hippie generation. In a co-op, the workers own and manage the company. But there’s a new resurgence in the co-op model: there are new co-op bakeries, solar companies, and laundries. Julie Grant reports about these new employee-owned, often green-focused businesses.

Transcript

Many people think the idea of business co-operatives is a leftover from the hippie generation. In a co-op, the workers own and manage the company. But there’s a new resurgence in the co-op model: there are new co-op bakeries, solar companies, and laundries. Julie Grant reports about these new employee-owned, often green-focused businesses.

The last few years have been tough in many inner city neighborhoods. Around the area known as University Circle in Cleveland some experts think the poverty rate is 40-percent. The streets are lined with boarded up, foreclosed homes, and the signs of poverty are everywhere: drugs, crime, and unemployment.

So, Mienyan Smith is glad to have a job. She’s 31-years old and has five kids.

She sorts laundry into large bins – blue blankets in one, white sheets in another. But this isn’t the same as any other job. Smith and the other eight workers are all about to become part owners.

“WE ALL HAVE A GOAL TO EVENTUALLY OWN THIS FACILITY. AND WE WANT IT TO ALSO EXPAND, SO WE WORK HARDER, TO LET THEM KNOW THAT ‘HEY, WE’RE IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL.’”

Smith and the other workers will ‘buy in’ to the cooperative. Since none of them has the 3-thousand dollars upfront, they will each give 50-cents an hour from their paycheck.

Jim Anderson is with the Employee Ownership Center at Kent State University. He signed the papers for 6-million dollars in loans to start-up the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry.

In 3 years, he says the first 9 employees will be owners…

“THEY’RE GOING TO HAVE TO BE INVOLVED IN DECISIONS. THEY’RE GOING TO HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE PURCHASING SIDE OF THE BUSINESS. SUPPLIES. WHAT THOSE COSTS ARE. THEY’RE GOING TO HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE PAYROLL SIDE. THEY’RE GOING TO HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE QUALITY ISSUES THAT CUSTOMERS HAVE.”

Even in the best of times this would be a challenging task. So, starting a worker-owned business during a recession might seem down right crazy. But Anderson says Evergreen is on track to succeed. Their workers really care about the success of the business.

Plus, the co-op has a market advantage. It’s made significant investments to be an environmentally friendly laundry. They bought washing machines with special energy efficient motors that save millions of gallons of water, and they purchased no-steam ironing presses that use less energy…

“WHERE, EVERYTHING ELSE BE EQUAL, WE’RE THE GREEN LAUNDRY. WE’RE GOING TO REDUCE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT MORE THAN ANYBODY ELSE WILL AND WE CAN SHOW WHY THAT IS. AND WE THINK, GIVEN THAT, WE’LL GET THE NOD FROM THE CUSTOMER.”

The co-op’s customers are mostly hospitals, nursing homes and hotels.

Gary Alperovitz says those types of businesses are rooted to the community – and that gives the Evergreen Cooperative a long term customer base.

Alperovitz is author of the book “America Beyond Capitalism.”

He says Americans are sick of overpaid CEOs and companies that abandon a community as soon as they find better tax breaks or cheaper labor…

“BUT COOPERATIVELY OWNED COMPANIES AND WORKER OWNED COMPANIES IN GENERAL, SINCE THE PEOPLE LIVE THERE, RARELY GET UP AND LEAVE TOWN AND GO TO THE SUN BELT. THEY ARE VERY GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY BECAUSE THEY ARE ANCHORED THERE.”

The Cleveland Model, as Alperovitz calls it, includes more than just the laundry. Evergreen has also opened a Co-op Solar Company, that employs a dozen inner city workers, and plans to hire up to 100 people. A Co-op greenhouse and a co-op newspaper are already in the works in Cleveland. Each intends to the be greenest company in its sector.

Alperovitz says the focus on green businesses is unique to Cleveland, but communities all over the U.S. are starting to look at the co-op business model:

“THERE’S A LOT OF SLOGANS, BUT THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE DOESN’T CHANGE, THE LOCAL ECONOMY DECAYS, THE TAX BASE DECAYS, THE ENVIRONMENT DECAYS. AND THE QUESTION BECOMES ‘ARE WE GOING TO SOMETHING OURSELVES? OR ARE WE GOING TO ALLOW THE DECAY TO GO ON?’”

In Cleveland, they expect the group of Co-op businesses to employ up to a-thousand people in the next five years – all from the neighborhoods that need the help. The plan is to start stabilizing the inner city one street at a time…

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Co-Ops Get Bikes Road Ready

  • The Sopo Bike Coop - new bike coops are still opening around the country, even in cities that haven't always been seen as friendly to human-powered transportation in the past (Photo by Dana Goldman)

Partly because of the economy, bicycles are becoming more popular now with adults. Dana Goldman reports a growing number of bike cooperatives is giving hands-on lessons about how to make old bikes road-ready with the help of some used but still-usable parts:

Transcript

Partly because of the economy, bicycles are becoming more popular now with adults. Dana Goldman reports a growing number of bike cooperatives is giving hands-on lessons about how to make old bikes road-ready with the help of some used but still-usable parts:

Matari Yumoja isn’t the typical bicyclist – yet.

He’s young, African American, and lives in the suburbs.

But on a recent weeknight, he was in the city hauling around his un-ridable hand-me-down bike. And trying to figure out how to get it working.

“Ever since I got it, its been looking that weird. The metal part of the wheel is really bent. It’s got a lot of issues right now. I definitely need new tires.”

In fact, Matari’s bike tires kinda looked like they’d been run over – more than once. Matari didn’t know how to fix them, and didn’t have money to spend at a bike shop. But on this clear spring night, none of that mattered.

“We are working on – what’s your name? Matari’s bike. And I’m Big John.”

“Big John” Brazwell is a regular at the Sopo Bike Cooperative in East Atlanta.

Sopo is one of more than a hundred bike co-ops that have opened around the country over the last few years. They’re do-it-yourself community centers with tools and used, donated, and salvaged parts.

People like Matari can learn to take old wheels, or handlebars, or seats and put them on other bikes. They end up with a functional bike that’s cheaper – and more unique than what they’d find in a store.

“The frankenbike is an industry term to refer to a bicycle that’s put together out of parts.”

Rachel Speewack is the founder of Sopo.

“Usually parts salvaged from bikes that aren’t functional any more. So it’s a term of endearment for one bike put together out of many.”

Speewack likes her Frankenbikes, and the bike coop model because they help people who want to start biking but don’t know where to start – like Matari Yumoja. And bicyclists like Big John are more than happy to teach what they know.

“Dude, we have to go in and find you a rim, because that one’s bent.”

“That’s what my biggest fear was.”

When Sopo opened 3 and a half years ago, Rachel Speewack couldn’t have known gas prices get so crazy – or that the economy would tank. But in car-centric, sprawling Atlanta, she and a few friends wanted to show that bikes could be a cheap, environmental, and practical.

We’re a community of people who already had our eyes on what gas prices were doing and the actual cost of being car dependent. To us the gasoline crisis was already here. And we wanted to do something proactive about it.”

When gas prices went up last year to more than $4 a gallon, Speewack watched as the number of visitors to its donations-only shop grew and grew. Just about everyone was looking for an option besides driving.

Now with more people out of work and pinching pennies, Sopo’s seeing even more people coming in with their bikes, looking for help.

During January and February, 275 people came to Sopo – even though the shop’s only open a few hours a day. Some came in a few times every week. But the bike coop’s popularity doesn’t really surprise anyone, including Speewack.

“We figure: how many people have a bike? Most everyone. How many have ridden them recently? Not many. Why is that? Flat tire, the brakes are kind of out. Minor repair issues. There’s an infinite supply of discarded bike parts and an infinite need for transportation and a lack of money. That’s where we come in.”

And there’s so much demand and interest it’s not just Sopo that’s coming in. New bike coops are still opening around the country – even in cities that haven’t always been seen as friendly to human-powered transportation in the past.

But these days all the co-ops – whether new or slightly less new – are happy to watch people who came in carrying their bikes leave riding them. After all, those same people often come back and help someone else looking for a new start on an old bike.

For The Environment Report, I’m Dana Goldman.

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Wanted: Affordable Art Space

  • Back in 2000, Laura Weathered and fellow artists were drafting what their artist community would look like. (Photo by Lester Graham)

When artists make a check-list for the ideal place to live – they add things the average family
might not, like plenty of work space and being close to other artists and galleries. Big cities
usually offer all the things on that list – but there’s a problem. Big-city real estate prices have a
habit of rising quickly – and pricing artists out. Shawn Allee found artists who’ve tried to stay
put:

Transcript

When artists make a check-list for the ideal place to live – they add things the average family
might not, like plenty of work space and being close to other artists and galleries. Big cities
usually offer all the things on that list – but there’s a problem. Big-city real estate prices have a
habit of rising quickly – and pricing artists out. Shawn Allee found artists who’ve tried to stay
put:

Laura Weathered began her career in painting in Los Angeles.

It was tough enough finding her muse – but it was also tough finding places to live that stayed
affordable.

“This kind of history of settling into a space and then the neighborhood going through
gentrification was chasing me all over L.A.”

Fed up, Weathered left for Chicago.

Before long, she found some Chicago artists had the same problem – rents and home prices just
weren’t stable.

Weathered and fellow artists got tired of toughing it – so about thirty of them put their heads
together and looked into buying property – to live in, to work – and maybe share with artist
groups, too.

“And someone’s comment was, You know, this is going to cost more than a million
dollars – who’s going to rent a bunch of flaky artists a million dollars?”

But then they did some back-of the napkin kinda math.

“We had a everyone go around the room and, What are you paying for rent? And that
was the Aha moment – collectively we could afford much more than a million dollars,
because that’s what we’d been paying all along.”

It took almost ten years to dig up funding and expertise, but eventually – they transformed a
former metal-stamping factory into artist housing, studio and office space.

People have been living in the artists’ community for five years now.

When you walk around, you see paintings in some loft windows and sculptures near the front
step.

Weathered shows off some shared gallery space.

“So, this is really important. You can bring test audiences in and see how it plays and get
feedback and the like without taking huge risks.”

All this is great – but the big idea was to make the space stay affordable for artists and artist
groups. So far, it’s worked.

“We can stay here a long time.”

This is Denise Zaccardi.

Zaccardi runs the Community TV Network. It has offices at the Bloomingdale Arts Building.

The network teaches low-income teens how to produce news, TV and documentaries. Zaccardi
says arts organizations like hers can benefit from this stability.

“Kids can tell their brothers and sisters down the line we’re here – we’re not moving
every three years, which is a common thing for people who rent, especially for artists.”

So, sounds like everything is an artist’ dream, right?

Well, like in other condo-associations, members have fought over repair costs. And artists who
own their units can only sell them to other artists. Plus, if they do sell … their profits are
capped. That’s made the units much lower in value compared to their neighbors’.

Laura Weathered says there’ve been second thoughts.

“I think some people are saying, ‘Did I agree to this too quickly?’ because it’s restrictive,
but the agreement originally was that we wanted an artist community and not just for one
generation for the future.”

Weathered says the idea was to keep units affordable for artists – and that’s been the case for
five years.

She says it’s not perfect, but if it works for a decade or two more, it might be a model for other
artists to follow.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Green Buildings Mean Retail Greenbacks

  • This retail store in Ottawa, Ontario cost 10% more to build than a conventional building would have. Owners believe they'll ultimately make up for the extra cost in energy savings. (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Green building experts have known how to make buildings more energy efficient for a long time, but the building industry is slow to change – especially in retail. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports on one company that’s challenging the status quo:

Transcript

Green building experts have known how to make buildings more energy efficient for a long time, but the building industry is slow to change, especially in retail. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports on one company that’s challenging the status quo:


At first glance, the Mountain Equipment Co-op looks like your
typical outdoor retailer. You’ve got the
rows of protein bars and the freeze dried camping
food. Forest green backpacks hang from the wall and candy-colored kayaks hang from the ceiling,
but what makes this Canadian company unique is what you can’t see. Almost everything, the displays, the floors, even the concrete, is
environmentally friendly.


Architect Linda Chapman designed the store, which is in Ottawa – Canada’s capital. She says part of her assignment was to reuse as much as she possibly could.


“A lot of the steel structure that you see, the steel beams and the steel joists here are all from the old building that was on site here. It actually saved us time because there was a real backlog and delay from ordering steel at the time we were building.”


Being environmentally responsible is part of Mountain Equipment Co-op’s mission. It’s a non-profit cooperative. It’s million and a half members pay a small fee and have a say in how the company is run. Mountain Equipment’s Mark VanKooy says their members want the company to reflect their own environmental values.


“They’re the ones really out there hiking, kayaking, canoeing, rock climbing, and it’s in their interest, I mean… most people realize the connection to environmental stewardship and the outdoors – that if you aren’t an environmental steward, you’re going to lose your wilderness and the outdoors and the places you like to do those things.”


That mission resonates with customers such as Trevor. He’s been a member of Mountain Equipment Co-op for almost 20 years.


“It shows me they’re forward looking, they’ve got a keen sense of awareness about the environment they’re in here… good corporate citizenry if you will. I’m very comfortable here.”


(sound of store)


Mountain Equipment Co-op has built eight stores – each greener than the last. When the Ottawa store was finished in 2000, it became the greenest retail building in Canada. In fact, there are too many features to mention. They seem to permeate every section of the building. It ranges from the wood floors salvaged from local barns to the high tech meters that control the intake of fresh air.


Mark VanKooy says it cost an extra 10 percent to construct the building, but they’ll get that back in energy savings over the next decade, and he says that’s a key point in trying to persuade others to follow their lead.


“Obviously, if it was twice as much to build the same building with the green building practices as it would be through standard construction practices, it wouldn’t be worth it, because even as a demonstration building, no one in their right mind is going to look at it and say oh, it’s a nice idea but its cost twice as much, yeah I’m going to do it.”


VanKooy gives lots of tours to architects and business people, but the building industry has been slow to adopt the idea. One of the biggest challenges is the way that buildings are typically constructed. Architects often come up with a plan without consulting the engineer or the construction manager, but in this case, they all sat down together from day one. They discussed each step in the process. The approach is called integrated design, and architect Linda Chapman says it ensured the environment was considered at every step along the way. She describes how the group chose materials to use in the walls.


“In terms of which one would have the highest recycled content, which one would have the best price, which one would be easiest to build…so that’s how decisions were made as a group.”


(sound in store)


The Mountain Equipment Co-op did receive a grant from the Canadian government, but funding for this kind of project has mostly dried up. Still, proponents say interest in green buildings is growing. According to the US Green Building Council, 5% of new commercial buildings last year met its strict environmental standards.


Retail stores such as Starbucks, Williams-Sonoma and the Gap have already built, or plan to build, green stores. In Canada, the Mountain Equipment Co-op has added two more, that are even more energy efficient, and were built without government help. They say if a nonprofit outdoor retailer can do it, a lot of other companies can as well.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.