A proposal for local partnerships between cooperative ecosystems and local government

Who ultimately decides on caring for others and the planet?

As I began to write a text with a personal, narrative style, while also reflective, I was searching for the right source of inspiration to get started. At that point, I recalled a rather extensive text I had written as president of the board of the Union of Parents’ Associations of the municipality where I live, which concerned the framework of actions and the collective’s future priorities. This may sound unusual to some, since such associations are typically seen as bodies that simply demand solutions to various problems from local government or the state, while the design of how these solutions will be implemented, as well as their management and execution, is handled exclusively by the competent authorities. Local government or the state, to which these authorities belong, are governed by elected officials and therefore have the right to make all critical decisions, having been entrusted with this responsibility by citizens through their vote.

However, despite this prevailing perception, the text of my proposal to the Union included, among other things, a number of quite concrete proposals oriented towards solutions, and these steps almost entirely involved citizen participation and, in several cases, the establishment of community-based cooperative schemes. These proposals were also informed by the in-depth discussions I had the opportunity to have with colleagues whose doctoral research I supervised, as well as with many other researchers.

In this text, I will limit my discussion to the proposals concerning food and the management of urban waste. Although they were prompted by issues within the school community, you will see that they ultimately concern the wider community, and I will accompany them with examples from Greece and abroad. 

Building a caring community through food

As regards food, the proposals relate to school meals. These can form the basis not only for social policy targeting vulnerable groups, but also for transforming the food model. According to sources1, in the previous school year (2024–25), the state allocated €115,000,000 for the daily provision of hot meals to approximately 45% of pupils attending public primary schools, with the cost per portion (including packaging and transport) amounting to just over €3. According to the state’s objectives, school meals are considered to “contribute significantly to strengthening solidarity and companionship within the school community, while also improving students’ performance… [having] a positive impact on the development of domestic primary production, as the products selected for meal preparation –carried out in collaboration with scientific bodies– are local and of high nutritional value. In this way, the healthy Mediterranean diet is promoted within the school community, while at the same time the number of jobs in local communities is increased”2.

However, according to a WWF study from 2019, 79% of teachers consider food waste to be high and 34% very high, while at the end of the day a significant number of meal portions remain unused3. Nearly 6 out of 10 teachers believe that greater variety in the menu is needed, along with better information for students and parents regarding the importance of meals, the Mediterranean diet and the avoidance of waste4].

What, then, could be done differently, and how could a partnership between cooperative initiatives and local authorities provide a sustainable and desirable solution5?

Funding could be directed to local authorities with the following key objectives: 

• Procuring raw materials from producers located as close as possible to the municipality, who cultivate crops or raise livestock, with organic certification or certification by the community.
• Children could visit production sites and complement raw materials through school vegetable gardens, which they would cultivate with guidance from producers and using traditional seeds from seed banks (such as “Peliti”6). At my child’s school, we voluntarily ran such a vegetable garden, initiated by the entire school community together with parents, which has now been incorporated into the educational programme.
• Children could prepare traditional recipes or experiment with new ones, while the food preparation space could partly function as an experiential learning workshop. At my child’s school, we also ran such a cooking workshop on a voluntary basis in the afternoons.
• In this way, education on food would become a genuinely experiential process, while it would also be possible to incorporate the game developed by the SSE Educational Hub on food sovereignty and sustainability KALOTrofA7 or similar educational tools developed by WWF8, among others.

The organisational scheme for implementing the above could be centred around an SSE initiative, whose members would be the workers involved in the preparation and distribution of meals, with parents’ associations also able to contribute as legal entities. The SSE initiative would collaborate with a group of producers organised as a collective legal entity, as well as with the school community through the institution of school cooperatives. 

It could also cooperate with the municipality through a formal programme agreement. Municipalities could provide spaces for meal preparation and integrate nursery school catering into the system. Fixed capital (equipment, etc.) could be acquired through programme funding, through cost reductions due to the absence of profit, as well as through the expansion of meal distribution –for a fee– to other members of the community, who would thus gain access to affordable and, above all, high-quality food, while simultaneously addressing a major challenge for families (cost and preparation time). The inclusion of the programme within municipal social policy could cover the cost for vulnerable households, and the program would also include social grocery stores. 

The same scheme could initially undertake the monitoring of school canteen procurement and, subsequently –once contracts expire or where no canteens exist– assume their management, with students and parents playing a decisive role through the school cooperative.

Another interesting prospect is the potential to reduce the causes of the urban heat island effect by preparing meals outside the urban fabric (rather than in individual households), during hours when solar energy could be utilised (through photovoltaic installations), in a space that could also function as a dining area.

The communities that could emerge around such an initiative could form the basis for exchange and cooperation across many other fields, such as reuse and recycling, the management of public spaces, mobility, and more.

Building a caring community through reduction, sharing, reuse and waste recycling

At the time of writing, municipalities have been called upon to pay retroactive landfill fees for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), while new legislation on waste incineration is expected to be passed. All indications suggest that existing policies are not guided by the goal of mobilising citizens’ engagement in MSW management based on the principles of the circular economy, but rather by an investment in their indifference9. 

For MSW incineration to be profitable, it requires either an increase in waste volumes — or state subsidies when such volumes are not achieved. Above all, however, it significantly undermines all processes associated with the circular economy, namely: 

• the prevention of MSW generation (e.g. purchasing unpackaged rather than packaged products)
• the sharing and reuse of resources, which reduces the need for both disposal and production
• recycling, which reduces the need for additional raw material extraction. 

The consequences of the absence of these practices include: 

• increased consumption of non-renewable resources,
• pollution of natural ecosystems (consider, for instance, greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change and microplastics that have become part of our diet),
• the production by societies of goods they do not actually need — meaning that individuals spend their time unnecessarily, instead of dedicating it to genuinely useful activities, such as developing new healthcare infrastructure, strengthening social relations, enabling the time required for participatory processes and democratic life, or pursuing personal development, among others. 

MSW management based on the principles of the circular economy can only take place when citizens participate in a decisive role, and this can only be achieved through cooperative structures. 

Returning to the school community, and building on the earlier proposal for transforming food practices, waste management could likewise be undertaken primarily by an SSE initiative composed of workers in this field, with parents’ associations and other local collectives also participating as institutional actors. The SSE initiative would aim to promote education on waste prevention, organise the sharing of resources, support reuse practices, and ultimately ensure recycling. The municipality could enter into a programme agreement with the SSE initiative, providing spaces as well as funding directly through landfill fees or other taxes (based on the “pay-as-you-throw” principle). Consider, for example:

• the sharing of children’s books, toys and materials that are not needed on a permanent basis, as well as a lending library of tools
• the reuse –following repair or repurposing– of items no longer needed by children (e.g. clothes, beds, plastic and paper materials that can be turned into toys, jewellery or decorative objects, etc.), made available at cost price for the repair or reconstruction work involved. The same logic could apply to furniture, clothing and other non-child-related items
• composting, which connects directly to the cultivation of food discussed earlier
• recycling, which follows reuse but requires careful separation of materials from the outset. There is also the possibility, prior to selling plastic materials, of exploring local recycling using machinery whose design is “open,” that is, non-proprietary10.

Each school could function as a collection centre for materials11, while each local community (or municipal unit or municipality, depending on the type of materials) could host centres for sharing and reuse. Relevant examples of cooperation between SSE initiatives and municipalities already exist12.

The outcomes, beyond the environmental and social benefits which are taken as given, include: (a) a significant reduction in waste management fees, (b) substantial direct economic benefits for households through reuse, and (c) in cases where materials are sold (through a centralised management mechanism, for economies of scale — potentially at the level of all SSE initiatives across municipalities nationwide), revenues are fully returned to the local community.

International examples of collaboration between municipalities and cooperative ecosystems

Are the above merely wishful thinking and fantasies? No. The example of the school community concerns an organisation that is not mobile, as a business might be. It is an “anchored” organisation — as are hospitals, universities and other public institutions. 

Initially in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States13, and later in Preston in the United Kingdom14, local municipalities decided to replace the suppliers of such organisations (especially when they were located outside their wider region) with local cooperatives (as well as small and medium-sized enterprises) that would provide the necessary goods and services, contributing to what is known as “Community Wealth Building”15. For example, the Evergreen cooperative ecosystem in Cleveland16 operates a laundry facility, a greenhouse and a renewable energy unit, meeting the needs of hospitals and other local institutions. Preston, taking Cleveland as a model, developed a similar approach with significant results. 

From these models, we can draw some useful practices: 

• Collaboration with an independent non-profit organisation that played an active role in local development strategies (and in funding strategies, as in Cleveland), or that produced research and policy proposals and subsequently worked closely (with municipalities, regions and institutions) on their implementation (as in the case of Preston).
• The establishment of a framework for socially responsible public procurement.
• The division of contracts into smaller lots to enable their delivery by cooperatives.
• raining for the conversion of businesses into cooperatives and/or to ensure compliance with certification and quality requirements set by contracts. 

What do we learn from the above?

The creation of local partnerships between cooperative ecosystems and municipalities is possible. Cooperative initiatives must strive to maintain a strong community base among those who benefit from what they produce. Municipalities must undertake all the necessary preparatory steps of consultation and training, in cooperation with organisations and research centres specialising in the commons and SSE. All existing legal tools should be utilised, but must certainly be reinforced by a framework for socially responsible public procurement, as well as a framework for social and environmental impact assessment.

The real “secret,” however, lies in establishing –both in our thinking and in our practices– that the economy is our own affair, and that we can organise it (as we already do to a large extent in our everyday lives, at home, in associations, in informal groups) in ways that meet our real needs (of frugal abundance, health, education, security, creativity, relationships, contribution, ecological coexistence, and so on), guided by a spirit of cooperation and care.