ROOTS Solutions ceased operations 9/1/2016. These web pages are for historical reference only.

We urge you to contact the worker cooperatives that were started or the individuals who participated directly. The ROOTS Solutions club had no ownership in or control of those individuals, cooperatives, or businesses.

ROOTS Solutions is a cooperative incubator that provides sustainable solutions to communities’ economic, energy, and food needs.

We are located in Yamhill County, Oregon, and we believe Community Economic Development doesn’t require big government, state intervention, or the involvement of large corporations.

Our startups are worker cooperatives where members focus on different aspects of local community sustainability.

• LED retrofit business Brilliant Northwest has a team that helps local small businesses drastically cut their electric bills and maintenance costs, while helping the planet!
• ROOTS Solutions engineering team designs and builds affordable manufacturing and farm equipment that is meant to keep “the little guy” in-the-green and more competitive than big corporate factories.
• The ROOTS Solutions sustainable agriculture team was a testbed for aquaculture and permaculture techniques – they alpha and beta tested the engineering team’s and the LED team’s hardware solutions and exchanged libraries, seedstock, information and advice with local growers.
• ROOTS Solutions wellness team provides access to affordable lifestyle, nutrition and supplement information and products.
• The ROOTS Building and Home Inspection cooperative provides affordable and creative paths to get homes into safe, functional, and efficient condition.

ROOTS Solutions started as a single worker-owned cooperative. As the different committees/teams worked on their respective projects, it became obvious that these worker-teams were the actual decision makers, and that the umbrella ROOTS Solutions was functioning as an incubator – a place for the separate cooperative projects to come check-in, get and give team advice and support, exchange resources, share information and opportunities, and get assistance in places they were stopped. In 2016, we stopped accepting new members into the umbrella ROOTS Solutions (new members instead joined the respective team worker-cooperatives).

While ROOTS Solutions does not meet formally any more, all of the incubated worker cooperatives do! Please feel free to directly contact those teams who are working in the areas relevant to you.