Espresso-ing change: co-designing coffee’s circular future

The evolving design context demands cross-disciplinary approaches to tackle complex, worldwide issues such as sustainability and the Circular Economy. The paper traces the establishment and genesis of the Center for Circular Economy in Coffee (C4CEC), a novel initiative developed through a long-term partnership aimed at rethinking value creation in the coffee sector. C4CEC applies the Multi-Level Perspective framework and co-design to introduce a systemic change in the coffee sector by interacting with sustainability’s environmental, social, and economic dimensions, not only as operational challenges but also as a redefinition of value beyond efficiency and growth. The paper highlights how the co-design process involves stakeholders, enabling situated and collaborative forms of design thinking that foster innovation and seek interventions to prominent themes like resource efficiency, minimal waste, and circular flows of production and transformation. Through Systemic Design, the research demonstrates how C4CEC is transforming the coffee supply chain and speeding up substantial, sustainable change. Finally, it identifies the pivotal role of co-design and systems thinking in enabling supply chain-scale circular change.