Looking to Go No-Waste? Consider Tossing the Trash Can

Owner Ben Lehman had grown weary of the piles of napkins, cups, and other trash heading out his door each day at Nashville-based Crema Coffee Roasters, which he opened with his wife, Rachel, in 2008.

“That visual can be so depressing,” he says.

Wanting to make a difference, the Lehmans gradually shepherded their café toward a goal of zero-waste, incorporating compostable and recyclable service ware and partnering with Compost Nashville and recycling company Earth Savers to redirect 95 percent of the roughly 28 tons of trash generated by Crema each year out of the city’s landfills.

The boldest step in the café’s pursuit of sustainability came in 2016, when Café Crema removed trash cans from their café dining area altogether. When ready to toss their items, customers now have just two options: recycling bins or composting bins. Everything except items in the café’s restroom trashcans is now either recycled or composted.

Sign in Café Crema, Nashville.

Instagram: @cremacrema

“I was really surprised at the reaction. I thought it was going to be negative, and instead it was almost a non-event,” says Lehman. “We yanked the trash cans, and it was perfect. Everyone just put things where they were supposed to go.”

To simplify the process, nearly all the disposable products used at Crema are now fully compostable, including biodegradable, PLA-based straws from World Centric. Soon, the café hopes to also become fully carbon-neutral, thanks to expanding tree-planting efforts to offset the utilities use and overall carbon footprint of its Nashville locations.

“We’re always looking for ways to improve,” says Lehman.

In Holland, Michigan, Lemonjello’s Coffee also found success by kicking their trash cans to the curb.

“We don’t have trash cans in the store at all, other than in the bathrooms,” says owner Matthew Scott, who cites early exposure to composting and sustainability on his grandparents’ farm as one motivating factor in his pursuit of zero-waste operations.

At Lemonjello’s, staff do all the sorting, sidestepping any customer confusion about whether an item is recyclable or compostable.

Lemonjello's owner Matthew Scott.

Matthew Scott

“We have standard dish bins and ask customers to put everything there, then we sort everything ourselves,” says Scott. “We find that’s easier than resorting later—and it takes away a potential obstacle for customers.”

“When I opened the café sixteen years ago,” he continues, “we didn’t have recycling downtown, so I’d take bags home to recycle them with my residential pickup.”

Before municipal composting was available, Scott partnered with a local famer to compost his shop’s grounds and food waste. More recently, Lemonjello’s has had access to both mixeduse recycling services and municipal composting—programs that it helped pilot and champion.

As a result—and thanks to its dedicated use of only reusable, compostable or recyclable service ware—the café typically produces just one bag or less of trash daily, despite serving between 500 and 700 customers, many of them students from nearby Hope College, on an average day.

The café offers discounts to customers who bring in reusable mugs or cup sleeves, and it markets the reusable and compostable Freedom Sleeve by Design by Freedom in its shop for $7.

“We even have customers who carry their cardboard Java Jackets in their pockets so they can reuse them multiple times,” says Scott. “Our customers love us for the green aspect of our business.” FC