When café and roaster Single O decided to track its emissions, the business quickly realised that incorrect disposal of coffee grounds was contributing to a whopping 30 per cent of the its total footprint.
The amount of coffee grounds that end up in waste, despite their rich potential, is a problem every cafe worker knows all too well, and one that Single O CEO Mike Brabant calls “the barista walk of shame”.
“It’s a big issue because in landfill it emits methane, which is 30 times worse than CO2, and 95 per cent of [coffee] is going into landfill,” Brabant said during a recent panel discussion moderated by Joanna Saville at Three Blue Ducks Rosebery. “So we had to do something.”
Brabant’s first reaction to the news – “probably not our best plan,” he jokes – was to consider buying an $80k dump truck to start a “worms on wheels” business. The dream quickly fell to the wayside when he instead hatched a plan with Melbourne’s Reground to bring the initiative to Sydney.
Reground is a certified social enterprise born out of Melbourne’s specialty coffee industry. Founded by Ninna Larsen in 2014, the business implements a hyper-local recycling model to divert coffee waste away from landfill.
The two companies first partnered in Melbourne in 2023, a collab which has already helped repurpose 40,000 kgs of coffee waste from Single O’s Melbourne cafes.
Giving a Puck
Under the NSW campaign, dubbed “Giving a Puck”, Reground will collect the spent coffee grounds from customers and divert it back to the local community for numerous beneficial uses, including growing food for local community members.
“People are well aware of the impact of single-use coffee cups, but far fewer realise that coffee ground waste poses an equally significant environmental challenge,” said Larsen.
“When left to decompose in landfill, coffee grounds release harmful greenhouse gases, yet they hold enormous potential as a resource. By expanding this initiative to NSW, we’re not just reducing waste – we’re empowering businesses to take meaningful action and rethink the entire lifecycle of coffee.”
“Expanding this initiative to NSW means getting grounds out of landfill, reducing greenhouse gases, and ultimately protecting the beautiful natural environment that our hospitality venues operate in – something we believe the NSW hospitality industry will get behind,” added Brabant.
In the first five years in Sydney, Reground expects to divert an estimated three million kgs of coffee from landfill – the equivalent of 85 million cups of coffee.
During the panel, Sydney City Deputy Mayor Jess Miller noted that the problem of waste is particularly poignant in NSW. “The big, scary fact is that by 2030 in New South Wales we’re going to be out of landfill sites, and the system as it currently stands is incredibly broken.”
“And there’s no silver bullet to the waste problem at the city. I can’t even tell you how many layers of bureaucracy, and legals, and trucks, and everything there are. It’s so complicated, and it’s so expensive,” said Miller.
“We try a lot, but ultimately it’s these small interventions done in collaboration with community and with business, that are elegantly designed, that are going to get us out of this hole.”
The first wave of the Giving a Puck initiative is now live. The program will open to all cafes and restaurants across Sydney from 1 April 2026, with aims to spread nationally.
Restaurants and cafes interested in joining the program can visit Reground or Single O.
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