Years ago I read a series of pieces about the greatest inventions in human history.  While I don’t remember the author or the publication, one essay stuck out to me.  The author argued that glasses were a major invention, as they allowed the visually impaired to see normally for the first time ever.

I am highly myopic (not just in my political and social views, but physically—my eyes are shaped in such a way that I have horrendous eyesight).  Thinking about living in a time before readily-available lenses really made me think.  If I don’t wear glasses, I pretty much can’t function.  Faces look like pinkish or dark blobs with two darker blobs in the middle.  Reading is only possible if I hold the text a couple of inches from my face.  Driving would pretty much be impossible—or, at best, extremely dangerous for myself and other motorists.  I can see—I’m not blind—but life would be a struggle.

Fortunately, I pop on a pair of glasses, and boom!—everything is clear (beyond the occasional smudge) and I can see!

My life is rife with humorous incidents involving my glasses, often when they get lost or misplaced.  The best was when I was floating on an innertube down at Fripp Island.  For whatever reason, I hadn’t taken my glasses off before going into the water (optometrists everywhere are screaming at their computer screens).  As I laid there, lazily drifting on the mild sea, my older brother—ever the prankster—came up from beneath me, capsizing me.  My glasses and I fell into the murky depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

Fortunately—by what had to be a minor miracle from God—my right foot landed precisely on my glasses.  It was enough force to pin them to the ocean floor without crushing or breaking them.  My brother, realizing how awful the rest of the vacation would be if I didn’t have corrective lenses, dove down and retrieved them, as I was too afraid to lift my foot, lest they wash out to see.

Had Neptune seen fit to take my glasses that day, I’d have either a.) spent the rest of the weekend miserably running into things or b.) someone would have had to driven me back to my home to get a backup pair (another major error—I didn’t bring a backup pair with me!).  My eyesight is so terrible, I can’t just pick up a set of readers from Walmart; I have to have specially-crafted super lenses.

But I digress.  Glasses have been a net boon for untold billions (I imagine) of people.  I’m one beneficiary.

So it was with great interest that I read a piece from news aggregator Latest Soup about glasses made from one of my other favorite innovations:  coffee.

The article is about Ochis Coffee, which takes recycled coffee grounds and turns them into sunglasses.  The frames are also biodegradable, so one could bury them in the backyard and they’d biodegrade in a century or so (in other words, much more quickly than plastic frames).

The company is Ukrainian as well, which I found interesting.  There’s a lot here for the climate progressive to love:  biodegradable coffee glasses made in a war-torn country they all pretend to love.  But the company just wants to make good glasses with recyclable materials.  That’s an admirable goal, even if you don’t think there is a climate apocalypse looming.

That said, the frames are expensive—around $278 (as of the time of this writing; prices are in Euros on the website) on the low end.  There are certainly plastic frames that can get that pricey, but they tend to be established designer brands.  I suspect most folks are like me, and stick to frames in the $80-$150 range.  That could be a major obstacle to trying frames made from glasses.

Regardless, it’s cool to see a company innovating and creating a way to take coffee grounds—good for composting, but usually tossed out—and put them to work helping people see.

From one myopic person to another, I see you, Ochis Coffee.