The idea
Most of what a business buys follows a straight line: made, used once, thrown away. A circular economy bends that line back on itself, so that materials stay in use for as long as they can, and what cannot be used again goes back to the soil rather than to a landfill.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which has done much to popularize the idea, puts it in three principles: eliminate waste and pollution, keep products and materials circulating at their highest value, and regenerate nature.
A coffee shop's waste
Every shop is different, but the same streams turn up behind almost every counter. What a local recycling program accepts varies from city to city, so check yours before changing a bin.
| Stream | Where it can go instead of the landfill |
|---|---|
| Spent coffee grounds | Compost, community gardens and farms, worm bins. Wet and heavy, so they matter to a hauling bill. |
| Milk jugs | Recycling where the local program takes them, and rinsed first. Bulk dairy or a different container is the step before that. |
| Cardboard | Recycling, and it has a market. Flattened and kept dry, it is worth more than the same box wet. |
| Cups and lids | Reusable cups and mugs for here, and a discount for customers who bring their own. Paper cups lined with plastic are hard to recycle almost anywhere. |
| Food scraps | Donation while the food is still good, then compost or a food recycler. |
| Cans and bottles | Recycling. Aluminum is worth collecting on its own. |
An order of preference
Not every option is equal. Roughly, from best to worst:
- Avoid it. Buy less packaging, order closer to what sells, serve in a mug.
- Use it again. Reusable cups, refillable containers, food donated while it is still good.
- Turn it into something. Compost from grounds and scraps, recycling for cardboard, cans and the plastics a program takes.
- Landfill, for whatever is left.
The Environmental Protection Agency ranks wasted food the same way: prevention first, then feeding people, then composting and other recovery, with the landfill last.
Why measuring comes first
A shop that does not know how much it throws away cannot tell which stream is worth a new bin, a new hauler or a buyer. A city, or the state, cannot see what small businesses discard at all, because nothing reports it. The Members put it plainly in their letter supporting the ROAST application:
We cannot change what we can't clearly measure.
Measuring does not have to be elaborate. A count of bags or buckets each week, with a note of where each went, is enough to start, as long as a measurement and an estimate are never mixed up.
What the Members are doing
Before the cooperative existed, Circular Earth set up a waste-diversion system at Beanchain Coffee in Mesa with Mesa Youth Climate Action Fund support: reusable cups, a food recycler and weekly collection. The cooperative's proposed first project, ROAST, would give small businesses tools to measure their waste, trade what they have spare, and pool what they learn.
Sources and further reading
Published October 5, 2026.