How We Are Building Zero Waste Cafe Operations
A tool for starting your zero waste journey
Waste is quickly becoming a global crisis for our lands, oceans, and air. Single-use items in particular place an outsized burden on our planet. Transforming our waste culture is a matter of climate justice—pollution places a disproportionate impact on the health of those most vulnerable, and our waste economy drives greenhouse gas emissions that warm our planet.
To do our part in confronting this crisis, Blue Bottle is looking for new models of care for people and the planet. To start, we need to reduce the waste our facilities generate. That is why we are embracing zero waste as a company and targeting for half of our US cafes to achieve zero waste by the end of 2021, with a goal to reach all US cafes by the end of 2023.
Already, our San Francisco Jackson Square cafe, a sustainability testing ground for the company, launched with zero waste operations, diverting 98 percent of its waste from landfill in the first month. In 2022 we plan to scale zero waste to US production sites and begin implementation in Asia.
What is zero waste?
In its simplest definition, zero waste means diverting at least 90 percent of waste from landfill, incineration, and the environment. But it is more than just composting or recycling. Zero waste is an environmental movement that redefines how we make, consume, and dispose of our things.
How will becoming zero waste, beginning in the US, affect Blue Bottle cafes?
Of all the waste created in our US cafes, no more than 10 percent can end up in landfill. Everything else should be prevented, reused, composted, or recycled. We already compost our food and coffee grounds and recycle cans, cartons, and glass bottles. But we need to go further.
In December 2019, we announced all our US cafes would be operating at zero waste by the end of 2020. Then the global pandemic arrived, and we shifted operational resources toward keeping our teams and guests safe. We now are reengaging and are on track to achieve zero waste operations in half of our US cafes by the end of 2021. As we strive for full coverage by the end of 2023, Blue Bottle will work to supplement our waste stream infrastructure in markets where compost services are not readily available. This includes working with landlords to expand collection, simplifying our compost streams by transitioning to more reusable and recyclable packaging, and identifying community partners who can benefit from our organic waste.
Since 2019, in addition to working on sustainability efforts such as emissions reductions and sustainable sourcing, we have taken a number of steps to transition to zero waste operations. We developed packaging standards to ensure we design for material reduction and resource recovery from the outset. We expanded food rescue efforts to recover edible food from our cafes and production facilities and give back to our communities. And we built a model to track cafe waste that was safe for our teams, scalable for large retailers, and more precise in methodology.
It is our intention with this resource to inspire others to embark on zero waste journeys.
A scalable waste tracker for retail
The model
The standard zero waste procedure for calculating waste diverted from landfill is to rely on weight tickets generated by waste haulers, or alternatively to base estimates on bin or dumpster capacity.
Our waste tracker increases precision without significantly increasing labor from teams. For smaller companies without the waste volumes for which a waste haul ticket is available, our tracker offers an alternative to volume-to-weight conversions, which can involve a good amount of uncertainty. Instead, our tracker calculates waste generation weights through monthly reports of the items we bring into our cafes.
Our first step was weighing individual items we order to cafes along with their components—from shrink wraps to instructional booklets—and tagging materials as reuse, compost, recycle, or landfill. Our tracker then multiplies weights by order volumes and measures waste streams accordingly. The model assumes we dispose of items properly, which is why we then conduct zero waste audits. These audits increase precision even for companies who receive waste haul tickets to track diversion rates.
Download a copy of the model to begin tracking your waste.
The audit
Two Blue Bottle cafes in every market run a quarterly zero waste audit as a live check on the order reports and data analytics built into the diversion tracker. We launched audits across all US markets in August. In the audit, we physically sort the facility’s waste by commodity—glass, paper, plastic type, etc. Items that were not disposed of properly have their weights in the tracker redistributed to the waste streams in which they were disposed, so each time that item appears in an order report the actual weight of waste is recorded.
For example, if at the end of the day five cold brew cans show up in our waste bins, three placed in recycling and two in landfill, the 11 grams of aluminum per can will appear as 6.6 grams in recycling and 4.4 grams in landfill within the model. When the next month's order reports arrive, waste generation reflects actual end-of-life scenarios and a lower diversion from landfill.
Quarterly audits further provide time for learning and action. Teams perform an analysis and author a Cafe Action Plan as part of the audit, which become living documents to track performance and inform cafe priorities over time.
In the cold brew can scenario, team members might plan to inform guests purchasing cans about the recyclability of our cold case products.
Download a copy of the analysis form to begin writing facility Action Plans.
We will evaluate during our first year whether all cafes should perform quarterly audits. To track progress and inform best practices, each cafe, beginning October, will receive monthly diversion reports including learnings from cafes most improved or consistently diverting waste from landfill at the highest levels.
Our Jackson Square cafe has implemented new sorting practices, guest communications, and ordering as part of its Cafe Action Plan. Based on the first several months of tracking US-wide, Blue Bottle will provide an update in January on our end-of-year target to reach 90 percent diversion for half of our US cafes.
Data analytics
While audits improve the accuracy of the tracker's waste stream sorting, qualitative and quantitative reporting improve accounting on waste levels by item.
Data analytics on dining options—your choice of "for here" or "to go"—establish a baseline level of items guests dispose of onsite. These items are germane to the model. Retail and cafe operations teams can further refine the assessment with their knowledge of cafe culture, as not every takeaway cup will be carried offsite, where it is out of scope.
Utilization rates—available with most inventory management systems—establish a portion of goods that are unsold and therefore disposed of by staff. In this scenario, we assume perished items are fully composted and damaged goods are sorted properly. The remaining volume is subject to a waste level adjustment. The waste level adjustments are established by quantitative and qualitative assessments of dining options as well as the audit analysis on portions of items consumed versus disposed, even when enjoyed to stay.
Let’s return to the cold brew cans example and follow 10 cases of cans from the time they enter the cafe to the time they are discarded. We’ll assume that 95 percent are utilized and 20 percent of utilized cans are disposed of in the cafe, based on data reported by the cafe team.
10 cases adds up to 120 cans. Our 95 percent utilization rate means 6 of the 120 cans were not utilized; maybe they expired, or arrived damaged. For these cans, the full 11 grams-per-item are assigned to recycling because cafe teams with proper sorting education disposed of the product.
That leaves us with 114 cans sold at the cafe. Of these cans, 91 were taken to-go and disposed of elsewhere; the remaining 23 were disposed of at the cafe by guests. For each of these 23 cans, the tracker assigns 6.6 grams to recycling and 4.4 grams to landfill (established in earlier exercise).
With all this data, the Blue Bottle diversion tracker can determine the overall impact of the ten cases of cans. It adds 1878.8 grams to recycling—inclusive of the ten 166.1-gram cardboard cases the cans arrived in—and 101.2 grams to landfill.
While grams of product may seem small in impact, taken together with all cafe materials, scaled to a suite of locations, and extended over a year's time, this tracker can measure tons of waste. Even for single-storefront retail locations, from the first report, this tracker can provide actionable insights and help set priorities to transition operations in support of a zero-waste economy.
What will be the biggest challenge to achieving zero waste in cafes?
To achieve zero waste, we have to evaluate our supply chain. One of the greatest challenges by material and volume is the coffee cup itself.
To hold hot liquids and maintain form, fiber cups need a barrier. Most commonly this is a polyethylene (PE) liner, which results in these cups being sent to landfill in most US locations. To avoid petroleum products and their contributions to our waste and emissions crises, Blue Bottle sources fiber cups lined with polylactic acid (PLA), a plant-based polymer. Certified compostable, these items nonetheless experience varying levels of acceptance in commercial composting facilities, and while Blue Bottle offers composting bins at nearly every US cafe—where services are available—we know a large portion of our cups are taken offsite where we cannot guarantee proper disposal.
Among the cups we collect in cafes alone, we estimate one-third end up in landfill due to lack of composting infrastructure. The remaining cups disposed of offsite rely on guests accessing compost bins and utilizing those services to achieve the end-of-life benefits embodied in our cups.
These dependencies underscore the importance of ordering For Here when we can and bringing reusable cups for takeaway beverages. It signals the need for Blue Bottle to share with guests the environmental attributes of our products so we can ensure items end up in the correct waste bins. At the same time, we must encourage development of a better single-use cup that can be recycled or composted. Over the past year and a half Blue Bottle has tested and provided feedback on various models from companies rethinking the barrier properties of a hot beverage cup. Together we can make choices that bring us closer to a zero-waste economy.
What is Blue Bottle's vision for zero waste?
First, we need to shift toward reuse with greater resolve and sort waste properly.
To make a real impact championing the highest and best use of our resources, we need to rethink how we do everything.
That means finding ways to cut back on packaging, working with existing vendors and investing in new solutions to responsibly source products, and creating ways to ensure our compostable and recyclable items end up in the correct bins.
Together with our guests we can find a new path forward for our planet and for our communities.