Why the Members want it
In their letter supporting the application, the Members described the problem from behind the counter:
Waste is a tricky battle for us as business owners. We don't want to create it, but our hands are tied by tight margins, corporate suppliers, and the waste/recycling/reuse infrastructure provided to us.
Coffee shops throw away materials that are worth something to somebody: grounds a farm can use, cardboard and aluminum with a market, food that could still be eaten. Without a record of how much there is, a shop cannot tell which stream justifies a new service, a group of shops cannot bid for a hauler together, and nobody outside the shop can see the problem at all. In the Members' words: "We cannot change what we can't clearly measure."
The three tools
ROAST would add three tools to software the businesses can use day to day:
Measure
A waste calculator each business uses to log what it throws away by material, amount and destination, keeping measured amounts apart from estimates, with an import of sales records from one point-of-sale system so waste can be read against what was sold.
Exchange
A resource exchange where businesses list surplus supplies, ask for what they need, and record each completed transfer: what moved, how much and where. Open to businesses that are not members of the cooperative, so what one shop cannot use can find a home instead of the landfill.
Pool
A shared database that brings the businesses' records together and reports them by material, destination and month, anonymized, for the cooperative and, as the participants agree, for the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and cities planning where to invest.
Alongside them, the pilot would map local haulers, recyclers, composters, material buyers and donation partners, so a business that learns what it throws away also learns where it could go instead.
The pilot
Twelve Arizona businesses would test the tools: the Member coffee shops, and businesses recruited through local business and sustainability networks, direct outreach and referrals. Each would get help setting the tools up and fixing what goes wrong, and would meet with the others regularly to report what works, ask for changes, and look for buyers and partners for their materials.
The pilot would produce:
- a waste calculator tested against the businesses' own records;
- a working resource exchange, proven by completed transfers between businesses;
- monthly, anonymized reports of waste by material and destination;
- a map of the local services the businesses can use;
- a playbook, so that other businesses, and the state, can repeat what worked.
Who does the work
- The Members would pilot the tools in their own shops. Fair Trade Cafe applied for the grant on the cooperative's behalf. They are on the Members page.
- Circular Earth, the cooperative's Sustainability Partner, would coordinate the project, bring the waste methodology and lead the outreach to new businesses.
- The Handbook Company would provide the software the tools are built on. It is developed by David Baxter, who co-founded Beanchain Coffee, one of the Members. His development work is part of the proposal. We say so here because a cooperative's own projects should be open about who benefits from them. More at handbook.company.
The planned sequence
About six months of work, starting only once the funding is authorized:
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Month 1 | Agree the materials, the measurements and the data plan with the pilot businesses, and assess the point-of-sale system. |
| Months 2 and 3 | Build the waste calculator and the sales import, and test them against real records. |
| Months 3 and 4 | Open the resource exchange and the shared reports, and map local haulers, recyclers, composters and buyers. |
| Months 5 and 6 | Run the pilot workflows end to end, fix what gets in the way, hand the tools over, and write a playbook other businesses can follow. |
How the data is handled
Pooling a business's waste data is only worth doing if the business trusts what happens to it. Each business would control its own records; shared reports would be aggregate and anonymized; anything reported beyond the cooperative would go only as the participants agree, under a data agreement written before any data is pooled. Measured amounts would be kept apart from estimates, so no estimate is reported as a measurement, and each transfer would be counted once. The rules come from the cooperative's own data principles.
If your business is interested
If you run a business in Arizona and would like to hear about the pilot if it goes ahead, tell us about it. Registering interest commits you to nothing, and until the pilot is funded we cannot promise anyone a place in it.
Updates
- September 2026. The application went to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality's Recycling Research and Development grant program, with Fair Trade Cafe applying on the cooperative's behalf.
Published October 5, 2026.