Coffee is part of everyday life in Taiwan, with more than 4.2 billion cups consumed each year. This generates approximately 127,000 tons of spent coffee grounds annually, most of which have traditionally been treated as waste despite their potential for reuse in textiles, filtration materials, and other value-added products.
Recovering coffee grounds at scale presents several challenges. Their high moisture content can quickly compromise quality, generation sources are widely dispersed, and reliable connections between material suppliers and reuse industries have been limited. As a result, large-scale recovery and reuse have been difficult to achieve.
To address these challenges, we partnered with Taiwan’s Resource Circulation Administration and industry key parties to develop the country’s first sustainable management platform for plant-based residual resources, using spent coffee grounds as a pilot material. The platform connects resource generators, logistics providers, and reuse industries, enabling material flows to be tracked, managed, and matched through a single digital system.
Through pilot implementation with retail collection points, reverse logistics networks, storage facilities, and downstream manufacturers, spent coffee grounds are collected, processed, and reintroduced into the supply chain as raw materials for textiles, filtration media, and other products. The initiative demonstrates how locally generated resources can be recovered and reused through a practical circular economy model.
As an integrated advisor, our team helped align policy objectives, industry needs, data management, and key party collaboration into a scalable solution. Beyond supporting coffee-ground reuse, the project establishes a framework for transparent resource management, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting, and evidence-based decision-making.
By transforming underutilized plant-based residual resources into traceable and measurable assets, the platform provides a model for advancing circular economy and sustainability goals in Taiwan and beyond.
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