By Antonio Colina IV  DAVAO CITY – Organizers of the Philippine Coffee Expo 2020 will stage a “Trashion Show” to encourage up and coming designers in the country to up-cycle 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 would be held alongside the Philippine Coffee Quality Competition during the Fourth Philippine Coffee Expo 2020 on April 2 to 3 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, or magaziners, and plastic bottles. Yumang added 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 P20,000 for the first placer, P15,000 for second place, and P10,000 for third place. All winners will bring home plaques and 50-perecent scholarship courtesy of the Philippine Fashion Academy. Manny Quisol, business development adviser of ACDI/VOCA PhilCafe Project, said the Philippine Coffee Quality Competition would be brought for the first time in Davao since 70-percent of the local coffee in the country comes from Mindanao. He added most winners of coffee competitions have also also come from here like the Balutakay Coffee Farmers Association (BACOFA), last year’s winner in the Specialty Coffee Expo (SCE) 2019 in Boston, Massachusetts. He added winners this year would be flown to Portland, Oregon on April 23 to 26, 2020 to represent the Philippines in the SCE 2020. The Philippine Coffee Quality Competition is an annual event designed to identify and promote the best quality coffees in the Philippines, he said. He added the purpose of the competition is to “motivate producers improve the quality of their coffees and to enhance market access by helping popularize the winning coffees to specialty buyers.” Among 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.