Ecology Action is an anarchist worker run recycling center in Austin Texas. It's not so much what we do, but how we do it. We believe we are creating cultures, models, stories of better futures.
Our History Texas' oldest and only non-profit environmental resource center was founded on Earth Day in 1970 by an all volunteer collective in Austin. For nearly forty years, EA's work has stayed very much the same—recycling and education. However, over time the structure evolved from all volunteer run to traditional non-profit, to what we now have—a staff collective.
In 2001, workers at Ecology Action wanted to return to their roots as a collective. They went on strike in defiance of poor management, low wages, and meddling from a previously absentee Board of Directors. As a result of the strike, staff began to create a workplace where everyone involved could have a say in their work environment and the business.
We've since added 'cooperation' to our recycling and education missions. We all come from different backgrounds. But, we share similar inspirations—drawn from peoples' movements all over the world. As Ecology Action makes our factory by working, we strive to have a participatory and democratic workplace and to make business decisions ethically.
Ecology Action Ecology Action operates a downtown flagship drop-off location, four satellite locations, and offers event recycling and business pick-up service with an annual budget of $400,000. We collect post-consumer and industrial recyclables that are processed and shipped to different facilities to be "recycled.” With our small staff, Ecology Action processes 10% of Austin's recycling. Nearly 300 tons of "waste" flows through our facility each month—that's 300 Hondas. And we do it without—gasp—a boss.
We don't do it alone. Everyday we come in contact with folks from all parts of society. Our downtown location is in close proximity to where much of the homeless population lives and seeks work and services. EA coordinates over 15,000 hours of court-appointed community restitution service. Consumer and commercial clients drop-off recyclables 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We treat everyone with dignity and respect no matter their ‘status’ and in return we have garnered goodwill across society.
When we interact with all those folks, we talk about the realities of recycling and about rethinking recycling. Much of the domestic recycling market is shipped overseas. Often times, recycling is sorted by underpaid and mistreated workers or reprocessed in environmentally hazardous ways—whether here or abroad. Some so-called "recycling" of plastics like those stamped #3 through #7 are most likely burned internationally and are advertised as "waste to energy" solutions. Corn plastics—touted as a ‘natural alternative’—are produced by Cargill, a giant chemical manufacturer, and must undergo another industrial process to actually breakdown.
Alone, recycling is not a comprehensive solution. It is most often a resource-intensive detour in the life of products on the way to a landfill. Effective work towards environmental sustainability has to include an honest and critical analysis of the limitations of capitalism and consumerism.
Our Organization "Who's in charge here?," is a constant refrain from recyclers. "No one" or "Everyone" is the response, depending on the staff's mood.
EA is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization operated by a staff collective. Our bylaws and personal policies reflect the culture of work we are developing. They are used as guidelines instead of as rules. We want to be accountable to ourselves and the group, by choice rather than coercion.
Our organizational culture is strongly influenced by anarchist ideas and principles, such as direct democracy, mutual aid and direct action. Although, you don’t have to be an anarchist to work here. We are not dogmatic, but use the ideas as foundations to create a just, healthy and sustainable workplace and, hopefully, models for other businesses.
EA strives to value labor fairly and justly—through wages, benefits, and workplace policies, through dignified, sustainable employment, and through solidarity with other movements. As we've developed as a collective, we've gone through a wage livability and equalization process. All members of the collective make the same, livable wage.
We are all responsible for our day to day actions and the long-term decisions that directly affect us. That's because we, as workers, have a serious seat at the decision-making table. We use a modified consensus process. We always strive to reach agreement and our decisions rarely come to a vote, allowing all of our voices to be heard, and participate as each topic affects each individual. We strive to make all our voices heard within the organization. We sit down every morning to plan the day, and every week to meet in committees. All of us do the dirty and heavy work, the administrative work, and public relations.
Also, EA moved away from traditional non-profit fundraising models—usually heavily reliant on grants from foundations and membership donations. Instead, we sell products and services that we believe have economic and social value. We run a nonprofit by running a business that is self-reliant. We've steadily, and intentionally, increased our materials sales as the majority of our revenue. If all the goodwill of foundations, the government, or individuals dried up tomorrow, we'd still be in business because we meet a need. Our autonomy from outside money allows us to make principled and ethical decisions on how, why and where we conduct our business. We can craft our workplace and programs as we see fit. We are creating functioning economic engines that are autonomous and operate ethically under a capitalist system and beyond.
Conclusion We will make mistakes along the way. But, that is part of the beauty of our work. We don’t have to have all the answers. We can ask questions of ourselves, our communities and others to adapt and build healthier systems. We want to exemplify with ‘propaganda by the deed’ that our work can be a part of our lives and communities and not separate. We don’t go to work and then have the rest of our lives. Nor, do we give our lives away to meaningless work. We run the business as ethically possible, which benefits many families, communities, and other grassroots organizations.
We want to show that we can have just, sustainable, and meaningful economic models where we don’t have to give up our ideals. We still dream while working for better worlds tomorrow and today. As a friend of ours once said, “If you want people to leave the capitalist system, create something better.”
Dreaming from the concrete jungle, Ecology Action Collective
John Clement, Eugene Crosby, scott crow, Susannah Cummins, Karly Jo Dixon, Jaxon Mitchell, Joaquin Mariel, Brent Perdue, Andrew Toelle
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Hey friends! I alluded to a big thing coming and THIS IS IT!
Patreon sucks ass but it's sort of the name of the game for fundraising things, and we need to raise funds, so here we are!
Do you like stickers? Do you like buttons? Do you like queer leftist shit as well as unique pieces of art you can adhere to the world or wear on your person? Please join our sticker club! You get stickers every month and maybe button/s if you want!
Check it out here -> STICKER CLUB
Also! More short designs will be coming soon! So stay tuned!
Read more below if you wanna know why we're doing this. Warning, it's long and sort of sad.
We started screen printing from one of our basements in 2020. It was, needless to say, the worst possible time to try and start a business. We barely survived and were able to move into the basement of the Milwaukee IWW's new union hall so we could all split the rent and make it affordable.
That was back in 2021. We were still struggling, but through word of mouth we got jobs and kept the lights on. We weren't really able to pay ourselves, but we all had second or third jobs so it was (mostly) fine.
We printed from that basement for about a year (and I hit my head on the ceiling and doorways hundreds of times) when a fellow wobbly and co-op enthusiast invited us to join his co-op as a DBA (doing business as). He sold us on the idea by offering to subsidize our workers' comp, general liability and book keeping expenses so we could try and grow sustainably. After some meetings we agreed to join as a DBA and we put our faith in this fellow worker whose intentions seemed pure and generous. We'll call him G.
Throughout the co-op's history some of our worker-owners' personal lives have been pretty chaotic. Working multiple jobs is stressful enough as a lot of you know, and so is navigating the continued stress of covid, having kids who are dealing with being bullied for being trans, all of us having major depression, adhd, etc. etc. We relied on each other, kept the lights on and just forged ahead, but there were some jobs that we delivered late or very late because of the chaos. G was understandably frustrated by these setbacks, as was I.
Because of the chaos, for about 5 months I was literally the only person working at the shop, performing literally every task from emails to quotes and mockups to invoices to pre-press, press, post-press and fulfillment. The Goncahrov shirts y'all purchased literally paid our rent, and I cannot thank you enough for that.
Then a fellow worker we'll call Z joined the co-op and saved my life. Z is amazing and I love him and owe him so much. He and I just kept at it and did what we could to care for our fellow workers who were struggling while away from the shop.
For about a year we've been trying to get an equipment loan to improve our processes because our little 4-color press and our flash and conveyor dryers suck ass. They're functional, extremely difficult to use, and they make our final product inconsistent and screen printing is a nightmare on them. It was all we could afford so we made the best of it and pursued a loan from a really cool cooperative lender that lends to other co-ops.
After a year of paperwork, making reports of our revenue and costs, analyzing our processes to improve them and show we were a viable business, they finally granted us the loan! We got a new press, better dryer, more screens and an incredible water-based digital printer/plotter combo that allows us to do stickers and decals and banners and buttons and other cool shit like that.
While we were applying for the loan, we were also pursuing a Collective Bargaining Agreement with the PPPWU (formerly the GCC) because we would be the only worker-owned co-op in our region (and maybe the US) to have the allied label, the most coveted union bug for printing. The local president was amazing to work with and we finally got awarded our union label and started paying dues.
It was around the time we began seeking the loan that G was doing and saying things we were a little confused by. He unilaterally fired two worker-owners in his co-op after months of mediation on my part to try and address interpersonal conflict. It's my fault for not seeing the writing on the wall then, but because he had done so much to help us, we justified his actions to look past our concerns.
Then, when those workers were gone he started to get abusive in text threads towards me and the other print folks, and we still looked past it because he had a lot going on in his life and that kind of stress can bring out the worst in anyone.
Well, a few weeks ago it came to our attention that we don't own our print co-op anymore, and we functionally stopped owning it once we signed on as a DBA. We thought we were all worker owners, but it turns out only I am, because I paid in at the time when I had the money. The abuse has escalated to the point that Z has quit, leaving only me the original creator the our co-op who we'll call M.
We're sort of trapped now. We're on the hook for rent at the shop until 2025, as well as the payments for our $30k loan, in a business that's been swept out from under us by someone we trusted who has become toxic and plainly cruel in his treatment of us.
Despite the stress and never really paying ourselves, I've enjoyed learning water-based screen printing and making garments people actually wear! It's been amazing! As the anti-workshop, we've been able to fund programs for our local IWW, the local tenants union and the local pro-palestine, anti-war committee. That has felt so good.
We've made our space an extremely queer, worker-focused spot for folks to learn the ins and outs of design and printing, which I am so proud of.
We're still here. We're still printing. We need to raise the funds to buy our equipment back by paying off this loan, so we can stop being a DBA of G's co-op and be our own entity again.
Food coops, housing coops, credit unions, and other such institutions are sometimes referred to as the “solidarity economy.” How do these institutions relate to working-class power? Do they offer w…
Food coops, housing coops, credit unions, and other such institutions are sometimes referred to as the “solidarity economy.” How do these institutions relate to working-class power? Do they offer working-class people some shelter or respite from capitalism? Do they perhaps even “create the new world in the shell of the old”? Nick Driedger and Eric Dirnbach, two veteran members of many institutions of the solidarity economy, debate these points.
Eric: We all noticed this recent article about the campaign for “postal banking,” where United States Postal Service branches would offer much-needed banking services for folks who lack access to bank accounts. The USPS actually used to do this up until the 1960s, and other countries still have it. This would obviously be helpful for many low-income people, who are forced to pay high fees at check cashing stores, and of course Wall Street banks hate the idea because they don’t want the competition. Unfortunately, according to the article, the national credit union association allied with the banks to lobby against it, which was news to me.
Now, I’m a member of a credit union and a fan of the concept. Financial institutions owned and run by their members are a great alternative to handing over our money to the standard, capitalist banks and increasing their power over us. Credit unions are in principle more accountable to their members and their communities, and have policies that are much more progressive than banks. And yet they took this bad stance against postal banking, deciding to protect their turf, just like the capitalists.
This reminded me of the recent Organizing Work exposé about bad labor practices and union-busting at a number of food cooperatives. I’m also a fan of food coops and have been a member of several, and those practices are extremely disappointing. Another problematic example is the Mondragon coop network in Spain, which I think is really impressive, but also incorporates a second-class tier of international workers who are not member-owners and who have even gone on strike against the coop.
Overall, these are examples of “solidarity economy” organizations behaving like capitalist enterprises. The solidarity economy can be described as a network of organizations and practices like worker coops, housing coops, community land trusts, food coops, credit unions, time banks, community gardens and other entities that are alternatives to capitalist businesses. A segment of the left, and I would include myself here, believes one strategy (along with others like union organizing) to help transition beyond capitalism is to grow this economy in opposition to capitalist practices and prefigure the better socialist world that we want. A hundred years ago they called this idea the “Cooperative Commonwealth.” But these examples of bad, non-solidarity politics undermine that ideal.
Nick: In the article you mention, we see an example of an arm of the United States government being called on to provide a new public service. The City of Cleveland specifically called on the United States Postal Service to provide banking services through post office outlets. These calls are also coming from grassroots campaigns among postal workers’ unions in the USA and Canada, who want the government to expand services, better serve rural communities and undercut payday loan companies, which are often the only way for many working people to cash their paycheques, at exorbitant rates.
I am a member of four different consumer cooperative businesses, and had my first job at one of them. The United Farmers of Alberta is an institution where I live. At one time, it was a political party, and for a number of years, a long time ago, it was the government of the province. I am a member and buy feed for my chickens and ducks there, and when I was sixteen they gave me my first job. It had benefits and clear hours and a job description. It paid head and shoulders above what most businesses in rural Alberta will pay a teenager.
I am also a member of my small town’s credit union. The manager of this credit union is a big player in the local United Conservative Party. I pay my insurance through The Cooperators Insurance. The manager of this coop was our New Democrat (social democratic party in Canada) representative in the provincial government that just fell in Alberta a couple of months ago. In the past, I have voted for left candidates for the board at Mountain Equipment Co-op (a camping supply consumer coop popular in Canada) who wanted to push for stronger ethical purchasing guidelines and support the cause of Palestinian rights.
Cooperatives in Western Canada are political and there is politics inside of them. They are often on their local chambers of commerce, and there is both a left wing inside the cooperative movement as well as a very strong right wing.
Where I live, coops are also a part of the local history. My family in a Saskatchewan farming community have worked for generations at a consumer cooperative simply called “The Co-op,” which provides groceries and fuel in many communities. In many rural communities in Western Canada, no one would have electricity if not for early rural cooperatives. Later, government services followed, like Alberta Government Telephones (which was privatized in the 1990s). Often coops would establish services that would be picked up as public services later. The words “Cooperative Commonwealth” have a deep resonance with people and a history here. Even a lot of conservatives consider the history of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (forerunner of the New Democratic Party) a history working people and farmers can be proud of on the prairies.
Eric: That is a fascinating history and I’d love to learn more about coops in rural areas. Clearly coops were organized over the years to meet the needs of rural residents. Agricultural supply and electrical coops are great examples of this. More modern examples are the internet service coops.
I’m more familiar with coops in an urban setting. I’ve lived in my housing coop in New York City for about ten years and was just elected to the board, so I’ve been thinking about this place a lot. Morningside Gardens, with almost 1,000 apartments in six buildings, was founded in 1957 and has a pretty rich history of cooperative activity, with many committees, clubs and other organizations formed. Folks started a cooperative workshop for woodworking and ceramics, a nursery school and a retirement service in the 1960s, which are all still running. The retirement service allows senior residents to age in-place and not have to move to a nursing home.
Members here have also been involved in community-issue organizing for decades, such as supporting local libraries, fighting for good subway and sanitation services, and campaigning for better local zoning to restrict luxury condos. Residents have formed several babysitting coops over the years. A theatre group was formed in the 1980s which still exists. In the last few years, several buildings have started a “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” mutual aid program, which is like an informal timebank where folks help each other with household tasks.
We had a food coop for over 30 years; that closed in the 1990s. I spent some time reading our old newsletters to learn about it and write up a history. The food coop members advocated for better consumer protection and product labeling laws in the 1960s and 1970s when the entire grocery industry was against more regulations. The coop also supported the United Farm Workers grape boycott and the Nestle baby formula boycott. In the 1960s, it started a credit union, which lasted for 15 years, so low-income members could have access to loans they couldn’t get at a bank. The coop also helped start at least two other food coops nearby, with funding and technical assistance. It made a small profit in most of its years and often returned a rebate to the members, thus keeping money in the community and out of the hands of a billionaire grocery boss. And it was a union shop. One of my neighbors worked as a bookkeeper there in the 1970s and 1980s and still gets the union pension today.
All this seems really positive to me and was enabled to a large extent by the cooperative setting. Of course, some of this activity could happen in a similarly-sized apartment complex of renters, owned and managed by a landlord, but a lot of it wouldn’t. Bosses and landlords monopolize power, decision-making and wealth. Workplace and tenant unions fight to expand worker and tenant power, of course, but ultimately the boss or landlord still owns the property and extracts the surplus value and rent. The process of people running their own key institutions requires a lot of volunteer work, but this cooperation I think builds skills and confidence and creates more opportunities and the desire to work together on other projects.
Now, I don’t want to overstate the situation here; this isn’t Full Communism. Of course there have always been folks who see it as just a nice place to live and are less engaged in its internal life and politics. And capitalism has intruded on our utopia. The coop was “limited-equity” for decades, meaning that apartments were priced at below market value to keep them affordable. This was because our coop originally received tax breaks and other assistance arising from the 1949 Housing Act, which was intended to create affordable housing (and has a complicated history). Then there was a contentious, long-running debate starting in the 1990s where a majority of residents voted to shift to market-rate pricing over time.
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The Write On Writing Workshop was wonderful! 🥰 We had a blast envisioning a just future ❣️🖋
If you were unable to attend, that is very okay! We will have more writing workshops in the future.
In the meantime, you can share or donate to our online fundraiser https://www.gofundme.com/f/brickandmortarcollectivehousewarming Your support of cooperative/collective housing means the world to us 🌺
The worker cooperative movement is flourishing. That’s because there’s a growing understanding that the economy and the businesses we work in would fair better if they were owned and run by the people. But starting a worker co-op is difficult, and the process can be daunting. That’s why we at TESA teamed up with The Laura[...]
We are going to have to get down, get dirty and struggle and work our way out of this. Our orientation is that we have to be fighting both defensively and offensively as much as we can at the same time. It is imperative that we not only remove them from power, but we totally re-orient the economy and society to [be] in balance and harmony with nature. We need a good grip on de-carbonizing the economy and putting forth a just transition. These are necessities and we have to build it from the ground up. That is what we are trying to do at Cooperation Jackson here in Mississippi...
We dream big here. We believe visioning small and trying to act in a very small and isolated way actually doesn't help us, or the broader left's project, in any form or fashion. We don't believe single-issue work is the way forward. We have to push beyond our capacity as we presently understand it. We think it helps people come out of their isolation to have some hope, and to start envisioning a future where they can be active participants in its construction.
Kali Akuno on dual power and organizing for resistance
Check out Ungovernable 2017 for groups and actions focused on local sustainability, resilience, and noncompliance.
