Looking at the world through coffee-tinted glasses
14 September 2019 at 9:30 am
Coffee lovers of the world rejoice – a company in Ukraine has created the world’s first coffee sunglasses.
Driven by an ambition to create eco-friendly yet stylish sunglasses, Ochis Coffee has invented a biodegradable compound from coffee grounds, flax and a biopolymer based on vegetable oil, to create a sustainable alternative to the petroleum-based plastic still used for the majority of glasses.
The “aroma eyewear” takes around 10 years to break down – which is 100 times faster than standard plastic glasses – and turns into a natural fertiliser if you put it in soil.
The handmade frames even smell like a mug of freshly roasted coffee.
CEO Maksym Havrylenko, who comes from a family of opticians and has 15 years of experience in the eyewear industry, says he loves creating new things and experimenting.
“From the earliest days of childhood, I worked in a workshop and viewed thousands of spectacles. I knew that one day I would create my own glasses,” he says.
“However, nowadays, plastic poses a great threat to the whole planet and mankind and I realised that the focus of the future should be ecological.”
His coffee solution followed a year of experimenting with different materials, conducting tests and researching to finally create true eco-friendly glasses made of coffee.
Last year the start-up launched a successful fundraising campaign on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, attracting customers from Australia, the United States, western Europe and Japan.
While Ochis Coffee currently has a small series production, Havrylenko has big plans to expand in the coming years, producing 10,000 pairs by 2020 and 100,000 in 2021.
