This story was updated July 31, 2024 at 4:12 p.m.
Editor's Note: An earier version of this story said South End Café would not participate in the Coffee Shop Reuse Network. It has been updated to reflect that the shop plans to join the pilot program.
Imagine you walk into your local coffee shop, order a drink to go, and they give it to you in a reusable cup. You go on your way, enjoying your chai latte.
Then, later that afternoon you need another little pick me up, so you head to a different local coffee shop. You hand them your still-dirty reusable cup from the morning, they wash it and give you another reusable cup.
Central Ohio Reuse Coalition, or CORC, is trying to start a cup-lending program like this in Columbus. CORC co-founder Dan Barash said it would work like a library, where customers “check out” a cup and return it or "check out" multiple cups.
It’s just one effort to keep single-use plastics out of the trash.
“Anywhere there's, like, food and drink, there's a lot of single-use containers, most of which are not recycled,” Barash said. “We decided to start with coffee shops because, hey, that's something most people can relate to and understand."
Barash said similar networks exist and succeed in other parts of the country. CORC is exploring three companies that run software to help operate them.
Columbus City Council approved $7,500 to support the pilot project. Barash said some of that money will help the first shops with start-up costs for cups and tracking software.
Councilman Christopher Wyche said the pilot Coffee Shop Reuse Network would be the city’s first independent circular economy initiative. Independent circular economies aim to make consumption sustainable by sharing, leasing and reusing items.
"The purpose of this pilot is to kind of one, gather data, gauge public interest, kind of incentivize those early adopters," Wyche said.
Wyche said Columbus consumers throw away more than 500,000 single-use coffee cups every day.
“And so, this is really a chance for us to provide breadcrumbs towards culture change and to get folks into the mindset of reusing things instead of sending everything to the landfill,” Wyche said.
Buying into sustainability
Joel Cosme, Jr., co-owner of Community Grounds Coffee and Meeting House on Parsons Avenue, said he would be interested in participating in a reusable cup program. He has some concerns, like the size of the cups and the temperatures they’d be able to handle. He also thinks it’s a program that would work best with regulars.
“I think that it definitely will require a bit of a shift in human behavior,” Cosme said.
Still, Cosme said he wants to reduce waste as much as possible. Community Grounds already offers a $0.25 discount when customers bring their own reusable cup.
Cosme hates seeing his shop’s cups turn up as trash on the street.
“I’m frustrated with, like, having visible evidence of the pollution that it causes in the neighborhoods,” Cosme said.
Just down Parsons is South End Café. Mike Premo, executive director at Community Development For All People, which oversees the shop, said he's excited to participate in the pilot program. He's already had conversations with Wyche and the city.
"We're trying to be environmentally conscious with the materials we source and the beans we source," Premo said. "So, this is just a further extension of that commitment to be as environmentally sound as we can be."
Premo added that despite having a small staff, he believes the shop will adapt to lending out, washing and storing reusable cups.
City Council's $7,500 will cover startup costs for the first few coffee shops that join the pilot. But there will also likely be a small cost for customers — a "borrow fee" — for customers who choose to participate in the program.
So, the question is how do you get people to buy in to sustainability? CORC’s Barash said one perk for customers is they’d be able to see their impact with a phone app or software.
“You can literally, as a consumer, keep track of how many items you're preventing from going into the waste stream,” Barash said.
“I think that it definitely will require a bit of a shift in human behavior."- Joel Cosme, Jr., co-owner of Common Grounds Coffee and Meeting House
Diverting waste from landfills
Of course, coffee cups are not the only problem.
The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio reports around three-fourths of what ends up in the in Franklin County Sanitary Landfill could be recycled or composted. That includes lots of food waste, cardboard and paper towels and napkins.
That includes plastic and paper disposable cups, which are a more recent addition to SWACO’s recyclable items list.
SWACO also reports that plastic containers alone make up about 4% of Franklin County’s waste by weight.
And a lot of the plastics that get trashed were only used for a short amount of time.
Barash gives the example of a disposable spoon. It’s made from petroleum and goes through refinement, processing and manufacturing, plus transportation.
“After all that processing and steps and greenhouse gases, you take that little white plastic spoon, and you use it once, you use it for like five or 10 minutes and then you throw it away,” Barash said.
That’s why another one of CORC’s initiatives is “skip the stuff.”
“Stuff” in this case means plastic cutlery, straws and napkins.
Barash says CORC is trying to get restaurants to ask customers if they want plastic cutlery with their takeout instead of automatically including it. Barash said handing out fewer disposables can save restaurants money, and it, of course, reduces the overall waste they create.
Washing the dishes - and forks, knives and spoons
One small Columbus company, We Wash the Dishes, is taking things a step further.
“So, we loan out, different wares, plates, silverware, cups, side dishes so that people can have reusables and have a zero-waste event if they choose,” said Galen Harris, a co-founder of the dish-loaning company.
After an event, Harris and her partner-in-sustainability, Mark Engelhardt, collect the dishes and then wash them.
“These four hands,” Harris laughed. Engelhardt added that they sometimes enlist the help of their families for big jobs.
Engelhardt and Harris have been at this about two-and-a-half years and have around 700 place settings.
Engelhart and Harris only rent dishes part-time, serving events like the Lenten fish fry at Immaculate Conception in Clintonville, a local band’s garden parties and graduations.
They had a few challenges getting started – first, the COVID-19 pandemic, and then, finding the right license for their unusual enterprise. They also had to find enough space to let dishes air dry, which is required for proper sanitation.
But with a bit of problem solving and determination, they say they’ve prevented about 38,000 disposables from going in the trash. They hope to start doing bigger events to make even more of an impact.
Harris said people like the better-quality, reusable place settings.
“You know, the tines on a plastic fork break as you're trying to eat something – that's not enjoyable. Or your plate is flopping over because it's kind of getting soggy from your food," Harris said. "We can offer, you know, a sustainable option for that.”
Engelhardt said they offer their services at similar cost to disposables. Plus, event hosts appreciate having minimal clean-up.
Engelhardt and Harris also said that people are excited about sustainability.
“We had, probably a middle school student come up to us at one of our events and say, ‘I am so glad you are doing this. It's about time that adults care about the environment that they're leaving for us,’” Engelhardt said.
Changing minds
Barash said that reuse isn't a new idea. Most people utilize reusable items every day.
"I mean, most people do not have single-use styrofoam plates and plastic silverware in their kitchen," Barash said. "In that context, it's second nature."
But the "disposable society," has also become second nature, he said, because it's easy and the actual cost is deferred.
He said he hopes businesses and consumers will change their mindsets and put sustainability over ease.
