Switching to coops, The Conclusion

It’s almost three years ago since I wrote my article about switching more to coops or more ethical alternatives. It’s three years later and mostly this seems to be a normal part of my life now. I figured I should write a bit about it, looking back how things went.

I think the most important point I wanted to get across, is that it’s OK to take time when making big switches, and I still stand behind that, maybe more than I did then. Even now, life changes, new needs arise. I try to not lock myself away just because I don’t find a perfect product or service. I see what I need, decide if I can live with it, and I look around for better when I have the time or opportunity arises.

Anyhow, looking back;

For music I was mostly using Jamendo. These days I look up things less. I have a nice library of music I like and songs I’ve gotten to know. So not much changed there. Software wasn’t a problem to begin with because I was already using free software. I have been using different operating systems and software during these past years, but this is not abnormal for me. For films, I eventually started MovieLounge where I have free-to-share films and series. This is not nearly enough to fill a lifetime, but it’s a thing that didn’t exist before, so yay.

For service providers that I can’t really get away from, I switched to a different sick fund, but that didn’t really impact me in any way. Kinda same for insurance and phone company. For email I switched to Nubo, a coop from Brussels who provide email and cloud, and was partly founded by some people I know. This one actually did change things for me. I never had much problems with my email infrastructure, but if things did go bad, it was immediately stressful. I still think self hosting your personal email is doable if you really want to do it, but joining a coop I trust did make things easier for me. They also have a Nextcloud set up so now I have file, calender and contacts sync, something I didn’t really have in the past, and I am glad to have it now. For electricity I’m still with Ecopower, and super happy with it. I joined a meeting once, they show themselves to be very open to feedback, are well organised imo, and are really pushing to get more energy through citizen participation.

For registrar I didn’t have a good solution at the time. There was domains.coop, but I wasn’t very happy with it. The interface was pretty bad, but since I barely use it, I was willing to live with it. But then I didn’t have a way to pay due to me being from EU and they from US, so I decided to leave. Luckily there is now LeBureau. They are currently a reseller, but aiming to become a registrar. It’s a French coop who’s founded because they too felt a proper coop registrar is something that was seriously lacking in the world. I heard about them through Nubo, who is also joining them. The site is all French, though, and I did have some troubles when moving, probably because I didn’t understand some things. But I quickly got help and things were sorted out. I do still have one domain at a for profit because I kinda don’t want to put both domains at one registrar, so there’s some room for improvement, but that’s OK.

I didn’t fully switch banks yet. There’s two, and one I’ll stay regardless. The other I’m very close to leaving. I was already very unhappy with them, and now something happened that shouldn’t have and I blame them, but they clearly don’t see it that way. I do not trust this bank anymore for the life of me, so it’s on my mental TODO list to make an appointment and close everything down. This is the one where I had my mortgage with. I put a lot of energy in it and was able to move that away somewhere last year. Once that was moved, I also moved my insurance and basically stopped all automatic payments still happening on that account. Things suddenly went fast :) I still kept it because of tax reasons, but that is now past, so, as I said, I’m very close to completely shutting it down. I’ll see if I join another bank or not besides the other one I’m with now.

Besides registrar, there was another happy surprise! I didn’t have a good solution for internet, but Neutrinet, whom I also mentioned in my previous article, finally provides internet over cable \o/. Compared to the market they are currently on the more expensive side, but for me more than worth it! I’m super happy with this!

Perhaps somewhat less good news is car-sharing. After I was free from the bank, I also looked into getting an electrical bicycle and eventually got rid of my car (well… it wasn’t gonna get through yearly check-up any more without substantial costs, so it was either no car or buying another one, and I was already barely using it and planning on getting rid of it). Partago, which I mentioned in my previous article, went bankrupt. There’s an energy coop, Coopstroom, who also did cars sharing, so I joined them, but they are currently also going bankrupt. I didn’t follow it close enough, but apparently they took over the cars from Partago, and this may (or may not, idk) be what eventually brought them in financial problems. This is quite sad ofc. For me though, I did have an account and put some money on there, but in the end never got to trying it out. So it seems I don’t need it that much anyhow. (I did loose some money here, but that’s OK, it was still worth going for it. Although I do whish I knew about these problems before I bought shares and put money on the account ><)

Going over my previous article, I notice I also mentioned groceries. That hasn’t changed much, but maybe a bit? There’s Oxfam, a fair trade store brand, and I do go there sometimes, although not nearly enough. There was a shop not too far from where I live, but it closed down. Now the closest one is already over 10km. That’s too far for just some groceries, but I do go there to get tea and see what other stuff I can use while there. And during travelling I did have the opportunity to go to a Coop market! Which I obviously did ^^

So yeah, I guess the biggest point I wanted to make here, is that, yes, it did seem a bit overwhelming at first, but by now these things are just a normal part of life. And this is I believe a good strategy for any big change you may want to make in life. It took me years, and sometimes I only did one switch a year. But think about the direction you want to go in, and see what steps you can take, and bit by bit you can get there. I believe in you!