Clothed in Coffee
An innovative Taiwanese company, Singtex, which uses plastic bottles to create textiles, has identified a new niche for coffee grounds.
Taking the form of its ‘S.Cafe’ coffee yarns, this pioneering development is the result of more than four years of research and testing, according to company general manager, Jason Chen. Made up of 98.5 per cent recycled PET bottles and the remainder coffee beans, these yarns have numerous pores, thanks to their coffee bean content, with this increasing as a result of the beans’ roasting. When blended into fabric, Chen claims that this helps “accelerate the moisture transportation process and provide better elimination properties” compared with other PET materials.
The idea is that making clothing out of these yarns will mean greater deodorisation properties thanks to the number of pores, with people therefore needing to wash their clothes less often, thereby reducing their carbon footprint – a key focus for the company.
Producing a sports shirt consumes an average of 21g of waste coffee grounds, equating to around three cups of coffee. Given that in excess of 100 million people are said to drink coffee on a daily basis, this puts coffee grounds in an ideal position for use in fabrics, according to Chen.
The company’s employees have long been collecting coffee grounds from stores and coffee chains, which has enabled the firm to produce nearly 20,000kg of coffee yarns per month. These yarns themselves, stocked by approximately 50 international brand owners of sports clothing and apparel, have helped Singtex win the 2010 Taiwan Excellence Award, a government-sponsored prize that recognises innovation and high-quality local products.