Friday, July 24, 2009

One tall half-caf macchiato...t-shirt?

You heard that right. SINGTEX has created fabric from coffee, cleverly named S.Cafe. First there's organic cotton, hemp, then bamboo and recycled PET (from milk jugs). Then it gets strange: fabrics made of thistles, bark, paper made from elephant dung. I have an extensive list of oddball fabrics. Tricia and I are working on a concept that uses milk fibers (which are fantastically soft, by the way). Now this--fabric made of coffee. I have no idea what the resulting fabric is. It might be another cellulose material, like bamboo or rayon. The SINGTEX website says that coffee grounds are a substantial landfill problem. Around here, our coffee grounds end up in the compost or in the garden (they're great for roses), so I'm not sure how accurate the coffee = landfill claim is. I'm doing more research. I'll post a follow-up when I get more details.

I think the real genius application here is a line of clothing made of coffee AND milk fabrics. Latte-wear, anyone?

Images from flickr user EileenRose. Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 2.0

1 comment:

  1. Lol, the latte-wear is actually pretty cool. I also havent heard of coffee being an issue in a landfill. The only thing I can think of is that it may degrade similar to other organic materials and produce greenhouse gases. But there isnt anything unique about coffee that does this versus an apple.

    You are right though, coffee grounds are great for roses!

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