Recycling Coffee Grounds & Plastic Bottles to Make Active Clothing

Consider your morning cup of coffee. 99.8 percent of the coffee bean is discarded after brewing a cup of coffee. Americans alone drink 400 million cups of coffee daily, generating 2,000 tons of coffee ground waste per day, ahead of any other country in the world. What happens to all those spent coffee grounds? Is there a process for recycling coffee?

A company in Taiwan has found a way to recycle used coffee grounds and plastic PET bottles, so that “two cups of coffee can be made into one T-shirt.” Singtex Industrial Co, Inc, has been a pioneer in the functional textile market since 2005, creating eco-friendly fabrics for clients like Patagonia, REI, North Face, Victoria’s Secret, and American Eagle Outfitters.

An “Aha” moment… over a cup of joe

Jason Chen, Singtex’ founder, was drinking a cup of coffee in a cafe one day when his wife joked that the used coffee grounds could take away body odor. A third-generation textile producer, Chen put two and two together, pouring in four years of research and $1.7 million of investment money to perfect the coffee grounds recycling process. The product: fabrics that minimize odor, resist fading, dry fast, and are breathable, windproof, and waterproof. Some products, such as their Coffee Yarn T-Shirt, are approved by Cradle To Cradle (C2C) certification.

The company also extracts oil from the spent coffee beans, which can replace petroleum-based chemicals for waterproofing fabrics.

The Process

Plastic PET bottles are recycled into polyester. Used coffee grounds, collected for free from businesses like Starbucks and 7-Eleven, are mixed into the polyester to make coffee yarn, which is then made into fabric. The result is clothes made from coffee grounds.

On average, half a ton of used coffee grounds are collected per day — a small percentage of Taiwan’s total daily consumption of coffee, but still a step in the right direction.

B2B collaboration towards a circular economy

Chen’s business model has been replicated at least once.

Columbia’s Federation of Coffee Farmers invited Chen to help them create textiles using Colombian coffee. Collaboratively, they were able to replicate the processes of coffee oil extraction and coffee-to-fabric technology. The resulting clothing is sold in the coffee shops that provided the used coffee grounds, keeping one material in the product loop — and exposing it to local customers — for a longer lifespan.

Gunter Pauli, the author of The Blue Economy, a book of case studies on global sustainable businesses, wrote: “Whereas no farmer can ever dream of getting more than a thousand dollars per ton of coffee, its waste can now convert into input for fabric.”

Going further in workplace sustainability

Singtex has taken steps to improve sustainability in their office as well. The company doesn’t use a fleet of carbon-emitting trucks to pick up the coffee grounds every day — their employees pick it up on their way to work. The company follows a strict recycling code, eschews coal for natural gas in their production, and their cafeteria goes vegetarian once a week to cut down on agricultural-related carbon emissions.

Singtex has shown that not only can a company be considered “green” by current best practices… it can go beyond them. Business models based on environmental sustainability can be learned from and replicated by other businesses. Collaboration between businesses in different industries can close the loop on waste products, and result in the sharing of know-how, profit generation, and customer loyalty.

Consider that over your next cup of joe.