A Value Study of Discards: unused resources in the Philippine coconut industry

Funding

Suntory Foundation research grant “Frontiers of Scholarship” 2026 (principal investigator)

Period

August 2026 to July 2027

Field

The Philippines. We visit a processing company near Manila, a cooperative in Cebu, oil manufacturers, the University of the Philippines Los Baños, and JICA.

Team

Satoru Tokuhisa (coordination and service design) and four researchers in cultural anthropology, fermentation science, food science and genetic-resource law, and ICT4D (Keio University, Kyushu University, Kagoshima University, and Kanazawa Institute of Technology).

Related themes

Theme 2, Theme 1

Research question

We clarify the social, material, and institutional conditions under which an unused resource turns from waste into a resource. We also clarify how that turn is designed and accepted in the local context of the Global South.

What we know so far

• Fieldwork in December 2025 confirmed that a copra-producing cooperative discards about one fifth of its coconut water into drainage channels. The threshold of discard lies at the processing plant, not at the farm.
• Cascading use of oil and husk is highly developed, while the water alone is discarded as an exception. The industry recognizes this as a shared problem, but no one has taken it on.
• Seen through the concept of resourceness in S-D logic, the discard is explained not as someone’s decision but as a structural outcome of the institutional arrangement and the absence of complementary resources.

How we proceed

1. We hold three monthly online study meetings. Each discipline is assigned a question and a deadline, and reports in the order of S-D logic, fermentation and food science, ICT4D, and cultural anthropology.
2. In December we conduct additional fieldwork with cooperatives and farmers in the Visayas and collect samples for component analysis and fermentation testing.
3. We submit to an international conference (ServDes 2027) and to the Society for Serviceology. A paper in cultural anthropology is also under consideration.
4. We report the results in July 2027.

Room for collaboration

We can work together on diagnosing by-products and unused resources for food, beverage, and chemical manufacturers, on CSR and new-business initiatives of companies with operations in developing countries, and on local implementation with international cooperation agencies. See For industry and government for details.

Related outputs