Bath café joins Maine pilot to cut takeout waste with reusables

Solo Pane and Pasticceria has become the first Maine business to join the University of Maine’s ReuseME pilot, putting a Bath café at the center of a live test of whether reusable takeout containers can work in everyday service.

The shop at 29 Centre St. is open daily year-round from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., and its role in the pilot makes Bath the first local proof point for a system UMaine is studying across three coastal communities: Bar Harbor, Bath and South Portland. The university said those communities all identified waste reduction as a goal in their municipal climate action plans.

ReuseME is part of an interdisciplinary marine debris reduction effort funded by NOAA, Maine Sea Grant and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. UMaine said the project is designed to explore the potential of reusable food packaging in Maine and to learn what affects adoption and success in each community. Before the launch, researchers carried out baseline food packaging surveys in the three pilot communities in June 2025.

For Bath customers, the shift changes a familiar takeaway routine. Instead of using disposable cups and containers once and throwing them away, customers borrow reusables and return them for cleaning and reuse. Staff handle the cleaning alongside the café’s other dishware, a setup that will be watched closely by other local food businesses weighing whether the added workflow is manageable.

Owner Mercedes Laboa said she likes the idea of borrowing and returning reusables and called the program clever. That matters in a small café where any new system has to work for workers as well as customers, especially during Bath’s busy stretches tied to the city’s year-round local base and its seasonal influx of visitors.

Bath’s pilot also has a wide local coalition behind it, including the City of Bath, the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, Bath Climate Calendar and the Bath Solid Waste Advisory Committee. UMaine describes Bath as a midcoast city with locally owned restaurants and Bath Iron Works as a major employer and identity marker, which makes the café a useful test case for whether the model can fit an ordinary business community, not just a campus or a large chain.

The pilot comes after Maine lawmakers approved LD 2091, which was signed into law on March 6, 2024. The Natural Resources Council of Maine said the law opened the door for businesses to offer reusable containers and receive them back for sanitizing, and it noted that packaging waste disposal in Maine costs property taxpayers at least $16 million a year.

Bar Harbor’s launch notice said customers there can borrow containers for free by downloading the Recirclable app and creating a free account, and it said Solo Pane in Bath had seen very fast adoption of the app. That kind of early response is exactly what will determine whether Bath’s café becomes a model other Midcoast businesses can copy, or just a well-meaning experiment that never gets past the first cup.