“Sustainability has always been a central tenet of the restaurant,” said Kate Lasky, co-owner of Apteka. “But in a way where we really try to take every decision we make seriously and ask, ‘What are the consequences of this?’”
To the average diner, sustainability might look like a compostable takeout container, a line on a menu about local farms or a small sign beside the register.
Behind the counter, it can look like a bartender holding citrus peels over a trash can for an extra second, wondering whether they still have one more use. It can mean hauling compost buckets through century-old buildings never designed for modern waste systems, flattening cardboard after service, reorganizing purchasing around reusable containers, cycling through compost partners that cannot handle restaurant volume and finding ways to extend ingredients before they become waste.
A chain of sustainability
At Scratch & Co.in Troy Hill , owner Don Mahaney described sustainability as a chain of interconnected decisions stretching far beyond recycling bins.
“I think, firstly, the most important thing is understanding, to the extent we can anyway, the overall impact of our efforts,” Mahaney said. Sourcing practices, waste reduction, staff culture and community involvement, he said, are all “profoundly interrelated.”
Scratch works with Pro Waste and has partnered with Zero Waste Wrangler for years, a relationship that predates the restaurant itself. Mahaney first started composting around 2009 while at Six Penn Kitchen.
Pro Waste handles waste hauling and dumpster services, including commercial waste and recycling collection. Zero Waste Wrangler focuses on diverting materials from landfills through composting and food-waste collection efforts, helping businesses redirect organic waste into compost systems rather than traditional disposal streams.
But even after years of building systems, Mahaney acknowledged blind spots.
“I honestly don’t know what happens to that product afterwards,” he said of compost streams. “Part of that is my responsibility to be more curious.”
Mahaney also argued that the uncertainty points to larger structural issues. He said manufacturers face relatively few constraints around materials, energy use and recyclability, leaving restaurant owners and consumers to navigate systems with limited information. With stronger standards and clearer disclosure requirements, he suggested, businesses might have a better understanding of what products are made from and how they can actually be recycled.
Years earlier, while working at a French bistro in Cleveland, Mahaney began thinking more deeply about sourcing. Today Scratch works with local producers like Clarion River Organics because, as he sees it, invoices rarely capture food’s full cost.
“Local sourcing is not about a culinary trend,” he said. “There are deferred costs of buying foods from around the world that you don’t see on your invoice.”
He pointed to a winter tomato as an example. Transportation costs may appear on invoices, Mahaney said, but environmental and labor costs tied to moving food across continents often remain invisible.
“I’m just spitballing here, but a tomato from Argentina in the middle of winter should probably cost something like $40 or $50 if you were being fully honest about all of the costs involved.”
Those hidden costs, he said, eventually return to relationships.
“We try to get to know our farmers. There’s an actual human connection and some consequence to it.”
A process of sustainability
At Apteka, sustainability evolved through years of experimentation.
The restaurant grew out of a monthly Pierogi Night pop-up before becoming a permanent restaurant in 2016. Lasky and Tomasz Skowronski built it as a scratch-made vegan restaurant focused on Central and Eastern European food, a model that naturally shaped the restaurant’s waste stream and community-centered approach.
“From day one we’ve composted. We’ve always recycled,” Lasky said. “Where things really evolved is our purchasing.”
Over the last decade, Apteka strengthened relationships with farms and producers while repeatedly reworking its waste systems. Composting, she said, proved far more complicated than simply deciding to do it. The restaurant cycled through multiple arrangements, including smaller organizations and farms that took vegetable scraps back to generate soil.
“It’s a really romantic idea,” Lasky said. “But it’s also really hard. You’re trying to maintain a compost program while also maintaining your business.”
Today the restaurant works with RoadRunner, a Pittsburgh-based commercial waste and recycling company that helps businesses manage trash, recycling and diversion programs.
Each arrangement with different companies over the years, Lasky said, came with different logistical challenges and costs.
“Honestly, the cheapest thing on our waste bill is the dumpster.”
Lasky draws comparisons to Seattle, where compost pickup functions as a standard utility; she described a system where composting feels seamless rather than self-constructed.
“You have your recycling truck. You have your trash truck. Then there’s a compost truck,” Lasky said. “I’m hopeful that’s where Pittsburgh eventually goes. And even at an individual level, composting becomes easy if the system exists. Three bins instead of two. That’s it.”
Lasky described minimizing waste as central to the restaurant’s identity. The restaurant switched to reusable quart containers, compostable takeout containers and compostable trash bags wherever possible. Even before scraps become compost, staff often try extending their usefulness by “giving them another life.” Apple scraps become pectin-rich syrups for drinks and glazes. Tomato solids become sauces, mayo or staff meals.
“When you’re throwing something away, you really see all of the effort behind it. You see the labor. You see the people who grew it. You want to get more out of it out of respect for them,” Lasky said.
Sustainability as tradition
Sarah Shaffer, owner of Tina’s in Bloomfield, grew up in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania, there was no municipal garbage pickup. Families burned trash, buried it or hauled it to the dump. Glass bottles were reused, plastic containers held grease and paper stayed in circulation.
“I won’t even call it sustainability. I would just call it necessity,” she said. “We weren’t reusing glass bottles because we thought we were environmentalists. We were a family of four making thirty thousand dollars a year. My mother was simply scrappy.”
“Poor rural Pennsylvania is always going to live in me,” Shaffer said.
That mentality now shapes Tina’s operations as much as any sustainability philosophy. Waste reduction, Shaffer said, is also a financial reality. Throwing away ingredients or materials that could otherwise be reused only makes margins tighter.
Years later, after moving to Pittsburgh and working in restaurants, Shaffer found herself instinctively noticing waste.
“I naturally started looking around and saying: wait a minute, why are we throwing all this away?”
Today Tina’s functions almost like a testing ground for systems she hopes to eventually help other restaurants build. She imagines consulting work beginning with basic questions: What can be recycled? What can be composted? What naturally exists already? What leaves only through landfill?
At Tina’s, those questions shape purchasing decisions.
“We are exclusively compost and recycling focused,” Shaffer said.
Fresh produce arrives seasonally. Reusable bins cycle back to suppliers. Cardboard gets folded and recycled. Organic waste gets composted.
“If you buy pre-packaged food, you inherit pre-packaged waste,” she said. “When you’re operating from a more in-house approach and utilizing raw ingredients, that packaging is greatly reduced.”
Operating inside a building dating back to around 1870 has introduced another layer of logistical challenges at Tina’s. Shaffer said the space was never designed with modern restaurant waste systems in mind, forcing the team to think creatively about how recycling, compost and other waste physically move through the building.
Over time, Shaffer said, examining waste becomes a process of elimination. “Does this need to exist?” she said. “Can there be an alternative? Can it be eliminated?”
Brewing with the planet in mind
North of Pittsburgh at Stick City Brewing, owner Nick Salkeld described brewing as deeply tied to landscape rather than simply product-making.
Stick City’s broader mission is simple: protect the sticks. Beer, Salkeld said, became a conduit.
“Having a beer after a long hike, after mountain biking, after climbing, after being outside with friends — there’s a social aspect to it,” he said.
Stick City joined One Percent for the Planet before selling its first beer and remains the only Pennsylvania brewery participating in the initiative, donating one percent of sales to environmental organizations.
Stick City avoids unnecessary bags, minimizes paper use and even operates without air conditioning. Salkeld said his thinking around waste has evolved over time. Growing up in the 1990s, he remembers constant messaging around recycling.
“I think people had faith in the system,” Salkeld said.
That confidence has become more complicated. Recycling infrastructure can be difficult to navigate even at a commercial level, especially when affordability enters the equation.
“It’s even difficult for us at a commercial level to find recycling options without it becoming really expensive.”
Stick City has developed an informal workaround to some of the economic realities of commercial recycling. Salkeld said dedicated recycling pickup services for aluminum can come with substantial monthly fees for businesses, creating another cost layer for smaller operations. Instead of paying for a specialized service, the brewery separates and collects its aluminum in-house. A local individual regularly picks it up and takes it to a metal scrap recycler. Salkeld said the arrangement offers an added sense of confidence because aluminum carries financial value, creating incentive for materials to actually enter a reuse stream rather than risk ending up in a landfill.
Like many breweries, they also contend with one of food and beverage production’s largest byproducts: spent grain. At Stick City, the grain returns to farms as animal feed.
“It’s human-grade food,” Salkeld said. “It comes into the brewery, becomes beer and then goes back to farms. There’s something really beautiful about that cycle.”
Still, these operators had spent years building systems, experimenting with partnerships and learning through trial and error. For restaurant owners starting from scratch, the path can feel far less obvious.
Lasky, who studied development planning and environmental sustainability at the University of Pittsburgh, said even with a policy background, finding answers could be difficult.
“I know how to find information,” Lasky said. “But if you’re starting from zero, there really isn’t a good place to find answers. Who do you call? Where do you start?”
Resources for restaurants
Bhavini Patel, executive director of Sustainable Pittsburgh, said many restaurants genuinely want to operate more sustainably, but those intentions often collide with the realities of running a business.
“Sustainability isn’t an abstract philosophical thing for a lot of these restaurants,” Patel said. “It’s deeply tied to their day-to-day operations, staffing and survival.”
Patel said support systems matter too. Sustainable Pittsburgh recently revived its restaurant recognition program, which offers sustainability assessments and connects businesses with tools and opportunities for operational improvements.
For restaurants already trying to rethink waste, food itself can create another layer of complexity. Alyssa Cholodofsky, CEO of 412 Food Rescue, said rescue, composting and diversion systems require additional time and coordination on top of the already demanding work of running a restaurant.
Through 412 Food Rescue, restaurants can arrange one-time or recurring pickups for excess prepared meals or ingredients.
Shaffer said the frustration extends beyond logistics.
“I’m feeding roughly seven hundred to a thousand people a week,” she said. “I’m preparing food, processing food, serving food, clearing food and disposing of food.”
Shaffer imagines policy solutions: tax credits, offsets and incentives that recognize restaurants doing this work. “I think the future of sustainability in restaurant systems — especially here — lies with local and state governments asking: How do we create tax advantages around this work?”
Because so much sustainability work happens behind kitchen doors, Shaffer said customers rarely see it.
“If you’re sitting at a bar stool or sitting back at a table enjoying a meal and you’ve heard about this work, ask,” she said. “Tell me a little bit about your composting program.”
Salkeld widened the lens beyond restaurants.
“Look at your local creek,” he said. “Notice the mayflies. Notice native species. Notice the wild trout. Recognize those places are around us and that they’re fragile.”
Awareness, he suggested, is where collective action begins. He pointed to non-profit organizations like the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Allegheny Cleanways and local watershed groups already doing work across the region.
“If people can appreciate those places, then they’ll want to protect them.”
