A chair made from coffee grounds by Taizhou-based company, Starway International Home Furnishing Co Ltd. [Photo/taizhou.com.cn]

A chair made from coffee grounds produced by Taizhou-based company Starway International Home Furnishing Co Ltd has been honored with two Canton Fair Design Innovation Awards (CF Awards).

The chair received both the Sustainable Development Award and the Gold Award at the recently-held award ceremony during the ongoing 134th China Import and Export Fair, also known as the Canton Fair, in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

The CF Awards are highly regarded by foreign merchants and are often referred to as the Oscars of China's export product design field. The organizing committee has established awards for seven categories of products, including electrical appliances, building materials, tools, transportation machinery, textiles, and clothing. Each category has gold, silver, and bronze winners. The Sustainable Development Award is a new category introduced in 2022.

The award-winning coffee grounds chair is crafted through the process of recycling and drying coffee grounds, which make up 40 percent of the total raw materials. These dried grounds are subsequently crushed and blended with polypropylene particles, resulting in the creation of the chair, according to Ye Genlin, chairman of Starway. The chair not only retains the texture, color, and fragrance of coffee but also showcases the coffee grounds on the surface of the seat.

This innovative use of coffee grounds is just one example of Starway's commitment to environmental protection. The company has previously utilized sawdust and straw combined with plastic to create green and eco-friendly products.

Coffee grounds, which are typically discarded as waste from coffee beverages, often end up in landfills where they continue to emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases. As global coffee consumption continues to rise, so does the pressure to dispose of coffee grounds. According to the International Coffee Organization, approximately 9.96 million metric tons of coffee was consumed worldwide in 2020, resulting in 6.47 million tons of coffee grounds within a single year.

In March 2022, Starway officially launched the coffee grounds chair, which quickly gained popularity and received high praise from customers in Europe and America, leading to a surge in orders. The company received more than 40,000 orders for the coffee grounds chair in that year alone, effectively repurposing over 40 tons of coffee grounds.

Ye expressed his unwavering confidence by stating, "Conservatively estimated, we expect orders to increase by over 20 percent this year, with sales reaching 50,000 to 60,000 chairs."