A young Torontonian is connecting sustainable cafés with customers who care

Written By Peter Allan

Kiethan Theva drinking coffee from a reusable cup at the Skills for Change Youth Climate Ambassadors program. Photo by: Charles Cadiente / Skills for Change

 

By Patricia Lane & Kiethan Theva

Kiethan Theva is shifting Toronto’s coffee-drinking culture. The 23-year-old from Scarborough, Ont., is building a network to help sustainability-minded cafés and values-aligned customers find each other.

Tell us about your project.

Responsible Cafés TO provides practical tools and guidance to help cafés implement reusable cup incentives, reduce single-use waste and communicate their sustainability efforts clearly.

How did you get started?

We spent the summer of 2025 interviewing more than 40 café owners and baristas to learn about their receptivity to this idea and identify barriers to implementation. It was instructive. For example, we learned that offering a meaningful discount for bringing a reusable cup can cost less than purchasing disposable cups. Some cafés already offer discounts but do not actively promote them because they are unsure whether the economics make sense. The best way to make up that difference is to sell more coffee. It is one of the reasons we put such an emphasis on marketing as a reason to work with us.

We learned of a Responsible Café movement in Australia. We reached out to them, and they were very helpful.

We started by working with cafés that were already moving in this direction, so we could learn faster and build a model that other cafés can realistically adopt. Our first confirmed partner is ChocoSol Traders. We are currently in conversations with several more cafés and our goal is to grow a small, credible network before scaling further.

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Peter Allan
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