DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 6 March) – Organizers of the Philippine Coffee Expo 2020 will stage a “Trashion Show” to encourage up and coming designers in the country to upcycle wastes produced by coffee shops by turning them into wearable pieces.
Nash Anthony B. Yumang, a member of the PhilCAFE Project, said the fashion event will take place alongside the Philippine Coffee Quality Competition during the 4th Philippine Coffee Expo 2020 on April 2 to 3, 2020 in Davao City.
“We are inviting individuals group like student groups and teams and designers of the Philippines who have desire to turn trash into fashion, to create fun wearable garments from discarded materials,” he said.
He said entries should be made of reused and recycled materials such as food packaging and wrappers, craft bags, plastic or paper bags, plastic straws, container lids, cardboard, paper, newspaper, magazines and plastic bottles.
Yumang added that aside from street wear category, participants may also join the cosplay category, also sporting costumes made of wastes from coffee shops.
Winners for each category will get to win P20,000 for the first placer, P15,000 for 2nd placer, and P10,000 for 3rd placer. All winners will bring home plaques and 50-percent scholarship courtesy of the Philippine Fashion Academy.
Manny Quisol, business development adviser of ACDI/VOCA PhilCafe Project, said the Philippine Coffee Quality Competition will happen for the first time in Davao since 70-percent of the local coffee in the country came from Mindanao.
He added most winners of the coffee competition also came from Davao like the Balutakay Coffee Farmers Association, last year’s winner which represented the country in the Specialty Coffee Expo (SCE) 2019 in Boston, Massachusetts.
He said winners this year will represent the Philippines in the SCE 2020 in Portland, Oregon on April 23 to 26.
The Philippine Coffee Quality Competition is an annual event designed to identify and promote the best quality coffees in the Philippines, he said.
He said the competition aims to “motivate producers improve the quality of their coffees and to enhance market access by helping popularize the winning coffees to specialty buyers.”
The goals of the competition include having the specialty coffee here known in the global coffee industry by performing evaluations aligned with globally accepted grading and profiling protocols as well as applying the standards of the Coffee Quality Institute, and to open more selling and pricing opportunities to Philippine coffee farmers. (Antonio L. Colina IV/MindaNews)