The Coffee Shop Owner's Guide to Eliminating Single-Use Waste

A practical guide from four years of iteration, mistakes, and doing it the hard way.

By Bobak Roshan, Founder, Demitasse

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Why we wrote this

I'm not writing this because it's good for business. I'm writing it because four years ago I started down this road, discovered how much misinformation exists about what "sustainable" actually means in the coffee industry, and figured someone should put the real information down somewhere.

Demitasse is a single-location café and roastery in Santa Monica. We're Green Business Certified by the City of Santa Monica. We run 100% paper-filter-free, print our own compostable bags one at a time, compost our grounds, recover surplus food, and eliminated printed kitchen tickets entirely. None of this happened overnight. Most of it took longer and cost more than we expected. Some of it failed and we had to come back and try again.

This guide covers what we actually did, what we learned, and what we'd tell another shop owner starting from scratch. It is not a manifesto. It is a practical document.

One thing upfront: a lot of what gets marketed as "sustainable" in this industry isn't. We'll tell you what to look out for.

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1. The Bag Problem

Where most roasters are getting it wrong

Coffee bags are the highest-visibility sustainability decision a roastery makes. They're also where the most misleading marketing lives.

The standard bag — the one most roasters use — is a multi-layer laminate with a one-way degassing valve, a tin tie, and usually a paper label stuck on the outside. It looks earthy. It photographs well. It is almost certainly not recyclable or compostable in any meaningful way. The layers can't be separated at a standard municipal facility. The degassing valve is typically made of plastic that contaminates the stream. The paper label is often laminated itself.

When a roaster tells you their bag is "recyclable," ask them: recyclable where, through what program, and by whom? If the answer requires shipping the bag to a specialized facility the customer will never find, it's not recyclable in practice. It's recyclable in theory, which is a different thing.

What we use

We switched to Biotré bags. These are plant-based and commercially compostable — the whole bag, not just parts of it. We print them in-house, one at a time, on a dedicated printer. There is no label, no tin tie, no degassing valve, and zero pieces of plastic per bag.

On the degassing valve

We removed it. Before doing so, we researched whether it was actually necessary. We found no credible scientific evidence that a one-way degassing valve meaningfully extends shelf life for retail coffee sold within a normal timeframe. The valve exists largely because it became industry convention. What it does is keeps bags of heavily roasted coffee from exploding. We don't roast that dark and in all our research and in-house experiments, nothing exploded and it all tasted fine even after several weeks. We got rid of it and haven't looked back.

In-house printing

Printing bags one at a time sounds slow. It is, but once you have the workflow down, it's not that bad. The benefit is that every bag is made to order — no overprint, no waste, and the ability to customize each bag (we offer a custom label option for subscriptions). It also means we're not ordering bags in bulk and sitting on inventory. Plus we don't have labels.

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2. The Paper Filter Problem

The highest-volume single-use item in most cafés

Paper filters are the single-use item most cafés overlook. They're cheap, they're small, they're invisible in the trash. But a busy pour-over or batch brew station goes through hundreds of them a week. Multiply that by 52 weeks and it adds up.

We went 100% paper-filter-free. Every brew method in the café — pour-overs, siphons, batch brew — uses reusable filters.

What we use

We use Precise Brew reusable polymer filters. These are custom-made and sourced from Greece. They're designed to be washed and reused indefinitely. The upfront cost is higher than a box of paper filters. The ongoing cost is essentially zero. In the past we'd used metal filters and I could see us using cloth filters if they made them large enough.

This required a shift in workflow. Paper filters are convenient partly because they're disposable — you don't have to think about them. With reusable filters, you build a rinse-and-store step into the bar routine. It's not complicated. It just has to be built in.

We also use reusable metal filters inside our siphons. But there is now a world of great reusable filters for every device imaginable. Just look!

If you're running a high-volume pour-over program and wondering whether reusable filters affect cup quality: they don't. Rinse properly, replace when worn, and the brew is indistinguishable.

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3. The Little Things That Add Up

Stir sticks, sugar packets, sleeves, and cups

These are small items individually. Collectively, for a busy café, they represent thousands of pieces of single-use waste per month. Most of them are easy to eliminate.

Stir sticks

We replaced plastic stir sticks with metal chopsticks. That's the whole change. They sit at the condiment bar, they get washed, they last indefinitely. Bonus points — no nasty wooden taste gets into anyone's coffee.

Sugar packets

We replaced sugar packets with sugar shakers. Customers take what they need. No individual packet wrapper, no packet in the trash. Shakers also tend to result in less over-use than packets, where people grab a handful and throw away what they don't use.

Sleeves

We run a reusable sleeve program in partnership with Design by Freedom. Customers can bring in a reusable sleeve or use one of ours. This required buy-in from the team and some customer communication at rollout, but it became habit quickly. I will say that this hasn't taken off as it requires customers to bring this thing in, but for those who have it, they use it.

Water cups

This one required iteration. We tried metal cups for water — they got stolen. We switched to colorful plastic reusable cups. The problem got solved; the material changed. The point is we kept solving the problem rather than reverting to single-use when the first attempt didn't work. I will say that finding the cheapest reusable option is best here.

If you're running a dine-in program, the default should be reusable. If a customer needs to-go, paper or compostable is the fallback, not the default.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. If the metal cups get stolen, use plastic. Reusable plastic is still better than disposable paper. Solve the problem in front of you.

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4. Digital Operations

Eliminating printed kitchen tickets

This one surprised us with how impactful it was. Every order that goes through a traditional POS system prints a kitchen ticket and a paper receipt. A busy café can print hundreds of these a day. They serve one purpose and go straight in the trash.

We implemented a KDS — Kitchen Display System — which routes orders to a digital screen instead of a thermal printer. The ticket never exists. No paper, no ink, no waste. We email or text receipts to customers.

KDS systems are not expensive. Most modern POS systems have a KDS option or integration. If you're still printing kitchen tickets, this is one of the highest-impact, lowest-effort changes you can make. It also tends to speed up service.

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5. What to Do With What's Left

Composting and food recovery

Even a well-optimized café generates organic waste. Coffee grounds are the biggest single stream. Food surplus is the other.

Coffee grounds

Spent coffee grounds are nitrogen-rich and compostable. Don't put them in the trash. We partnered with Sustainable Little Tokyo to compost our grounds. In Santa Monica we have folks come and take the grinds away when they need them for their garden. If you're in a city with an active composting program, look for a commercial composting pickup or partnership. Grounds are valuable to community gardens and urban farms — a direct partnership with a local garden is often easy to set up.

Food recovery

Surplus food — pastries at close, prepared items that didn't sell — should not go in the trash. We partner with Too Good to Go to redirect surplus food to people who need it. There are food recovery organizations operating in most urban areas. The logistics are simple: you set out a bag, they pick it up. The impact is real.

Internal transport

We use reusable bags for moving coffee within our own operations — between roastery and café, for internal transfers. Small thing. Worth building in. We also deliver to our wholesale partners in these bags. Nothing more wasteful than a foil-lined five pound bag that is used to move things around that gets ripped open and then immediately dumped.

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6. Getting Verified

Why external certification matters

Self-declared sustainability is easy. Anyone can put "zero waste" on their website. External certification is harder and more meaningful.

We hold a Green Business Certification from the City of Santa Monica. This is not a self-assessment. It requires documentation, site review, and ongoing compliance. We've held it since December 2019.

What to look for in a certification program

• Third-party verification — not self-assessment
• Specific criteria, not vague commitments
• Ongoing compliance requirements, not a one-time award
• Public documentation of what the certification covers

Check whether your city, county, or state has a green business certification program. Many municipalities have these and they're underused. The process forces you to document what you're actually doing, which is useful independent of the certification itself.

LED conversion

Convert to LED lighting. This is not a complex sustainability initiative. It reduces energy consumption significantly, the bulbs last years, and the payback period is short. If you haven't done it, do it.

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7. Understanding the Labels

What these terms actually mean

This section exists because the terms used to market "sustainable" packaging are consistently misused, and buying the wrong thing because you trusted the label is worse than not trying — it costs you money and doesn't solve the problem.

Compostable

Means the item will break down into non-toxic components within a defined timeframe under the right conditions. There are two kinds: home compostable (breaks down in a backyard pile) and commercially compostable (requires a commercial composting facility with controlled temperature and moisture). These are not the same thing. A commercially compostable bag is useless if your customer can't access commercial composting.

Look for: BPI certification (US), TUV OK compost certification (Europe), or equivalent. Ask for the documentation, not just the claim.

Recyclable

Means the material can theoretically be recycled. Does not mean it will be recycled, or that your customer can recycle it through their curbside program. Multi-layer laminates are technically "recyclable" if you ship them to a specialized facility that processes them. In practice, they go in the trash.

For a bag to be genuinely recyclable, it should be accepted in standard curbside programs in the regions where you sell. Ask the supplier which municipal programs accept their bags.

Honestly, recyclable isn't the solution. Most of what is recyclable doesn't actually get recycled. We could write a whole separate book on this topic, but to really move the needle as a society, we just need to move away from single-use consumables.

Biodegradable

The least meaningful of the three terms. Technically, everything biodegrades eventually. The word has no standard definition or certification requirement in most markets. Treat it as marketing unless accompanied by specific timeframe data and certification.

Plant-based

Refers to the source material, not the end-of-life behavior. A plant-based bag is not automatically compostable or biodegradable in a useful timeframe. It just means the raw material came from plants rather than petroleum. This is meaningful but not sufficient on its own.

If a supplier can't tell you exactly what certification their packaging carries, which facilities accept it, and how a real customer is supposed to dispose of it — treat the sustainability claim as unverified.

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8. Where to Start

A prioritized list for shops starting from zero

If you're reading this and trying to figure out where to begin, here's the honest prioritization based on what we've learned:

High impact, low complexity

• KDS — eliminate kitchen ticket printing. Fast, low cost, high volume impact.
• Sugar shakers instead of packets. One purchase, done.
• Coffee grounds composting partnership. Usually free to set up.
• LED lighting conversion. Short payback period, measurable energy reduction.

High impact, moderate complexity

• Reusable filters — requires workflow change and upfront cost, but ongoing benefit is substantial.
• Food recovery partnership — requires coordination but logistics are simple once set up.
• Reusable stir sticks / condiment bar items — requires team buy-in and a sanitation plan.

High impact, higher complexity or cost

• Packaging switch (if you're a roaster) — supplier research, verification, workflow change. Worth it, but takes time to do right. If you're a café, ask your roaster to deliver in reusable bags. And always work with a local roaster so you're not shipping stuff from all over the country.
• Green Business Certification — documentation-intensive but forces you to audit everything.
• Wholesale bag return program — requires customer communication and coordination.

Don't try to do everything at once. Pick one item from the first category, implement it fully, and move to the next. Partial implementation of ten things is less useful than complete implementation of three.

This work doesn't end. There is always something else to look at, something to iterate on, something that didn't work the first time. That's not a problem. That's just what it looks like when you're actually doing it.

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Questions? We're happy to talk through any of this. And by no means is this a finished project. If you have other ways, other ideas, share them with us! We can update this any time.

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