The 10th Annual International Festival (called iFest for short) was held at Sugar Land in Texas on November 7: iFest celebrates diversity of cultures in the community. While other countries highlighted their unique traditional arts, foods and customs, Taiwan highlighted its modern culture of eco-innovation by featuring T-shirts made of coffee grounds and plastic bottles.

The Taiwanese coffee grounds shirts are both eco-friendly and functional, having such features such as odor control, fast-drying, UV-protection and temperature regulation. The fabric material has been widely used by several name brands including Hugo Boss, the North Face, Timberland, Nike, Puma, and Ralph Lauren. Taiwan has long-been a global textile leader and has combined this with the enormous progress made in its recycling technology to produce high-quality fabrics from materials that were once considered “garbage”. Taiwan is determined to combat climate change, along with the rest of the international community, and took this chance to introduce its “can-do” spirit of innovation to make the future progressive and green. T-shirts are highly popular items but these Taiwanese t-shirts represent more than just a fashion choice: they highlight the magic of turning coffee grounds and PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic bottles into clothes.

In addition to eco-innovation and high-tech, the Taiwan booth also presented a display board giving visitors details of top reasons to study in Taiwan, scholarship opportunities. It was decorated with tourism attraction posters, brochures, and local cultural artifacts, such as Hakka fabric umbrellas, and Taiwanese glove puppets. An interactive activity with a “Quiz & Prize” box gave small prizes to booth visitors who came up with the correct answers to questions and attracted big crowds to the Taiwan booth all day long.

The event organizer, Sugar Land City Hall in Texas, estimated that 4,000 to 5,000 people visited the iFest Live 2015.

(Photo) Louis Huang, Director-General of TECO in Houston (back row) and Sophie Chou, Director of the Education Division of TECO in Houston (front right), posing with Taiwanese indigenous dance performers.