Green Initiatives for Green Profits in Local Coffee

6/12/2025

An idea hatched in Happy Joe Coffee in Tempe in March of 2024 has grown to impact coffee houses across the Valley come 2025. This idea has evolved into Circular Earth. We provide sustainability services and specialize in cost savings for coffee houses through sustainability intervention. We were given the opportunity to blossom when the City of Mesa and GreenLight Solutions took a chance on our team.

In March of 2024, two vigorous sustainability students from Arizona State University’s Tempe campus got together at a local coffee shop. One was policy-focused and the other a business disciple. You’d be surprised to hear that it was Kyleigh Brown, a Local Government Leadership Intern, who was recruiting me, Tim Whitney, a now Business Sustainability alum, to start a business interested in waste diversion and circularity in the beverage retail space. Nessa Hald became our third founding member and resident specialist in sustainable materials. We hopped into ASU’s accelerator program, Venture Devils, plus any other startup ecosystem we could find - all to develop our joint mission to make impact in sustainability via entrepreneurship.

We decided to focus on coffee houses due to their being a hub of community influence, a globally impactful crop/supply chain, and the accessibility of coffee house owners - not to mention a mutual love for coffee. We started with not a shop, but a local roaster, Passport Coffee and Tea, to get a higher-up perspective of the market. We met with experts in recycling, small business, and sustainability consulting before we reached out to coffee house owners. Soon, it would be time to put our knowledge into action.

Come September of that year, we won the first grant we applied for and our mission became reality. The Mesa Youth Climate Action Fund (MYCAF) sponsored a handful of youth in the community to implement meaningful change in energy, water, air, and beyond. GreenLight Solutions became our non-profit representative and parent partner in this project. Ashley Weisman, Executive Director at GreenLight, became an instrumental element of our success. Her leadership, organizational skills, and unmatched sustainability passion and expertise shone through all the difficulties we encountered. We performed outreach to nearly 20 independent Mesa coffee houses to find our impact partners with her guidance. Nick Shivka of Local First Arizona became another non-profit partner who from start to finish offered invaluable guidance in the desert landscape of small business sustainability. After weeks of multi-modal outreach, we only had a couple of partners on the hook. What we didn’t know is that their sustainability problems and opportunities alone would be more than enough to make an impact.

The two businesses that became benefactors to our MYCAF are Jarrod’s Coffee, Tea, & Gallery and Beanchian Coffee. With the help of our two student coordinators, Madisyn Langford, ASU sustainability student and SRP intern, and Neha Karanjia, sustainability Honors student and research fellow at ASU, we were able to create personalized paths to greater sustainability with our coffee house partners. After weeks of going back and forth with owners, performing best practices research, and consulting experts we decided to pull the trigger - sustainability taking action.

The team commissioned FOR Energy, a local residential energy efficiency specialist to perform an inspection of Jarrod’s energy efficiency. Jarrod’s is located in historic Mesa, and the coffee house is, literally, a house. A historic home nearly 100 years old full of character and charm. FOR made him aware of issues in airflow and ductwork, and shared paths forward. The results were welcomed by Jarrod as a “miracle”. Although proceedings have been delayed by back-and-forths with the pleasant landlord, Jarrod thanked our team for the care we took into his business. We plan to continue working with him and his business.

Beanchain Coffee is on a mission to eradicate poverty at the root. Fair wages, community spaces, and educational resources in addition to wonderful coffee and tea are all to be expected upon your visits. For Beanchain we mobilized the MYCAF, with the help of our team and partners, to purchase ceramics for in store use. We estimate saving over 1,500 single use cups a month, diverting waste from the landfill, emissions from production and transportation, and saving Beanchain money that it can put back into the community. In addition, we sponsored a 1-year-long Recycled City and Mill subscription to divert all of Beanchain’s organic waste to compost. The coffee grounds that coffee houses use are a significant waste stream for all the shops we work with. Beanchain’s organic waste, primarily coffee grounds, will become not waste, but a part of thriving local ecosystems. A local news channel will visit the shop to hear about our sustainability success story.

We owe everyone mentioned above and the City of Mesa a huge thank you for our successes. We feel proud to have touched the community in ways that a blog post can’t surmise. May there be many more opportunities for youth to collaborate between business, government, and academia to make our beloved communities greener - while making local businesses more green!