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A cooperative is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned enterprise". Cooperatives are democratically owned by their members, with each member having one vote in electing the board of directors. Cooperatives may include:
Co-operative Group Limited, trading as Co-op, is a British consumer co-operative with a diverse family of retail businesses including food retail and wholesale; e-pharmacy; insurance services; legal services and funeral care.
The Phone Co-op is a consumer co-operative in the United Kingdom, which provides landline, mobile telephone and Internet services, including web hosting and broadband. Now part of the Midcounties Co-operative, the largest independent co-operative in the UK, it is owned by its customer-members who democratically control the business and who share in its profits. This makes The Phone Co-op the only telephone co-operative in the UK.
The United Kingdom is home to a widespread and diverse co-operative movement, with over 7000 registered co-operatives owned by 17 million individual members and which contribute £34bn a year to the British economy. Modern co-operation started with the Rochdale Pioneers' shop in the northern English town of Rochdale in 1844, though the history of co-operation in Britain can be traced back to before 1800. The British co-operative movement is most commonly associated with The Co-operative brand which has been adopted by several large consumers' co-operative societies; however, there are many thousands of registered co-operative businesses operating in the UK. Alongside these consumers' co-operatives, there exist many prominent agricultural co-operatives (621), co-operative housing providers (619), health and social care cooperatives (111), cooperative schools (834), retail co-operatives, co-operatively run community energy projects, football supporters' trusts, credit unions, and worker-owned businesses.
A consumers' co-operative is an enterprise owned by consumers and managed democratically and that aims at fulfilling the needs and aspirations of its members. Such co-operatives operate within the market system, independently of the state, as a form of mutual aid, oriented toward service rather than pecuniary profit. Consumers' cooperatives often take the form of retail outlets owned and operated by their consumers, such as food co-ops. However, there are many types of consumers' cooperatives, operating in areas such as health care, insurance, housing, utilities and personal finance.
The Midcounties Co-operative, also branded as Your Co-op, is a consumer co-operative in the United Kingdom with over 700,000 members. Registered in England under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014, it is a member of Co-operatives UK and the Co-operative Retail Trading Group.
Coop, COOP or Co-op most often refers to:
The history of the cooperative movement concerns the origins and history of cooperatives across the world. Although cooperative arrangements, such as mutual insurance, and principles of cooperation existed long before, the cooperative movement began with the application of cooperative principles to business organization.
A student housing cooperative, also known as co-operative housing, is a housing cooperative for student members. Members live in alternative cooperative housing that they personally own and maintain. These houses are designed to lower housing costs while providing an educational and community environment for students to live and grow in. They are, in general, nonprofit, communal, and self-governing, with students pooling their monetary and personal resources to create a community style home. Many student housing cooperatives share operation and governing of the house. As with most cooperatives, student housing coops follow the Rochdale Principles and promote collaboration and community work done by the members for mutual benefit.
The Ontario Co-operative Association is a co-operative association serving co-operatives and co-op member organizations in Ontario, Canada. It is one of nine Anglophone provincial cooperative associations across Canada and collaborates with the Conseil de la coopération de l'Ontario (CCO), its Francophone counterpart in Ontario.
Community wind projects are locally owned by farmers, investors, businesses, schools, utilities, or other public or private entities who utilize wind energy to support and reduce energy costs to the local community. The key feature is that local community members have a significant, direct financial stake in the project beyond land lease payments and tax revenue. Projects may be used for on-site power or to generate wholesale power for sale, usually on a commercial-scale greater than 100 kW.
Co-op Energy is a British energy supply company based in Warwick that began trading in 2010. It sells renewable electricity and gas to its ethically concerned member owner/customers and is a established large operator, an alternative to the Big Six energy suppliers. Given that its parent is Midcounties Co-operative, it is the only co-operative supplier in the British market, meaning members can receive dividends and/or interest on their trade with the business. Since August 2019, energy supply, billing and customer service have been operated by Octopus Energy.
REScoop.eu is the European federation of renewable energy cooperatives, founded in 2011.
Energy4All facilitates the creation and development of community energy in the United Kingdom, based on the experience gained in the creation of the UK's first wind co-op, Baywind Energy Co-operative. It has gone on to raise over £40m on behalf of the co-operatives and community benefit societies through community share offerings.
Wase Wind is a Flemish energy cooperative, active in the production of renewable energy and the supply of electricity from wind turbines.
A renewable energy cooperative is a decentralized, non-governmental initiatives of local communities and citizens to promote the production and consumption of renewable energy. It is formed by a group of community members, that shares a common long-term goal for a sustainable future of energy and works to advance the transition through active citizenship involvement. In this way, the citizens are prosumers: they act as both producers and consumers in an attempt to democratize energy supplies by shifting away from relying on large companies.
References
- ↑ https://coopseurope.coop/sites/default/files/Dirk%20Vansintjan_WorldForumLille.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
- ↑ Statement on the Cooperative Identity. International Cooperative Alliance: http://ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles