CAN LAUNDRY AND LETTUGE SAVE CLEVELAND? A WORKER-OWNED CO-OP THAT EVEN A CAPITALIST COULD LOVE IS WASHING LINENS FOR THE CLEVELAND CLINIC AND GROWING VEGETABLES FOR THE CITY.

• Author: McGraw, Daniel
• Position: Cleveland, Ohio

ABOUT 40,000 POUNDS of laundry from hospitals and nursing homes--bed sheets, towels, surgical scrubs, bibs, and lab coats--arrive by truck daily at a massive building just east of Cleveland. Literal blood, sweat, and tears must be removed, and the items must be sent back, fresh and clean and folded, by the next day.

The interior of the laundry facility is about the size of a football field. Laundry is processed in 220-pound bags. The dirty clothes and linens spend 90 seconds in one washer, then 90 seconds in another; bleach and purifying chemicals are added in a third. Items go through two drying machines before they're pressed and folded, sealed in plastic, and shipped out.

This same process happens every night in every city in the world. Human fluids and other unmentionables that come with hospital life need to be dealt with so patients don't get sicker. The work doesn't pay a lot, and it definitely is not glamorous--but it's both necessary and necessarily local, given the fast turnaround that's needed.

Such facilities tend for obvious reasons to employ low-skilled individuals. Yet here, the economic arrangement differs from the norm. This laundry is being cleaned by Evergreen Cooperatives, a company owned in part by the people who work there. When stuff gets done more efficiently and profits go up, those with an ownership stake get bonuses at the end of the year.

Co-ops can get a bad rap, with a lot of people picturing the small money-losing food co-ops that exist mostly to subsidize brown rice for old hippies. But in its 10 years of existence, Evergreen has become one of the more successful, ambitious, and inspiring examples of the species--and rather than trying to upend the capitalist system, it is using economics as its operational foundation. The business has found a market it can thrive in, provides services at competitive prices, and then passes the profits along to employees who will spend their earnings in the local economy, hopefully creating a "fiscal multiplier." The idea is that average workers being able to afford groceries and cars and houses is a more important form of economic growth than a company's stock price going up.

Besides providing laundry services for Cleveland Clinic, one of the top health-care systems in the country, the co-op grows hydroponic lettuce and herbs in a 3.5-acre greenhouse. It also recently ventured into solar installations for existing buildings whose owners want to decrease their energy footprints.

Evergreen's annual revenues are now over $6 million. The laundry operations are profitable and the lettuce growing will most likely enter the black this year. Currently the co-op has 225 employees, about 45 of whom are worker-owners. (People must stay for about a year before they qualify for the ownership bonus.) Expansion plans are in the works.

AMERICA IS AT a crossroads in how to approach urban poverty issues and the wealth gap--especially in older Midwestern cities such as Cleveland. The left generally wants more welfare funding and public spending, while some on the right think the solution is to preach hard work and personal responsibility. Coops like Evergreen think they've found a third way: nonstate market institutions that chase profits while also giving a boost to people who could use a little help.

Workers here start at between $10 and $13 an hour. Many have been incarcerated, but at Evergreen, that is not held against them. About 20 employees so far have bought homes through a company-sponsored buying program that aims to get their purchase paid off in just five years, and the end-of-year bonus for those who qualify is likely to be more than $3,000 per person for 2018.

John McMicken, who has been the CEO of Evergreen Cooperatives since 2013, acknowledges that the dual mandate-economic sustainability and social service--can be a difficult balancing act. "Our mission has always been...