New East Digital Archive

Here’s why your next pair of glasses could be made from recycled coffee

Here’s why your next pair of glasses could be made from recycled coffee
Image: Ochis Coffee

28 November 2018

Ukrainian brand Ochis have launched a new campaign to turn your daily caffeine hit into designer eyewear.

The group’s new eco-range, Ochis Coffee, features glasses frames made from coffee grounds: the mulchy coffee bean byproduct that usually gets thrown away before your drink has cooled.

The grounds are mixed with flax and a biopolymer based on vegetable oil before being moulded into a brick shape. The frames are then cut using a computer.

Founder Max Gavrilenko says that the frames are durable, lightweight — and even smell of coffee.

“The main idea of coffee eyewear is an absolute rejection of petroleum plastic,” says Gavrilenko. “The frames decompose 100 times faster than ordinary plastic glasses andcompletely degrade after 10 years in soil or water. [Then, it] turns into a natural fertilizer for new plants.”