Brut. made a video about our glasses, here is the article: 

They make glasses with shells

In Auray, Brittany, two entrepreneurs have started manufacturing sunglasses. The particularity of their small business: they make the accessories from shells.

More than a ton of shells transformed into 3,000 glasses. This is the exploit that Laurent and Sandrine have been able to achieve in Auray, in Bretagne. Since 2016, this duo has been making sunglasses from oyster shells, mussels, scallops and lobsters. The founders of the company Friendly Frenchy recover this production waste from the food industry in order to recycle it.

The manufacturing process

"Once collected, they are ground into powder. It is important to know that these are shells that are destined to be buried or incinerated, they cannot be put back into the sea [for reasons of hygiene, Editor's note]. Once they have been reduced to powder, we use them in our plates. We make our own material rendering with colour developments in order to make glasses out of them", explains Laurent.

They don't collect shells on the beach, but make the dustbins for the food industry.They also go to the oyster farmers' tasting huts, for example. Once the shells have been cleaned and micronised, i.e. reduced to crumbs, they are revalorised in materials. "These materials is for this hand-made manufacturing process, we make plates to be machined. And it is in these plates that we cut out our shapes to create our glasses, both the frames and the sides", Laurent explains.

Once the glasses are machined at the eyewear manufacturer's, the pairs are sold on their website and to opticians. The price of the pairs can vary between 80 and 265 euros depending on the model. Recently, the company Friendly Frenchy has started to manufacture glasses made from grape seeds, the "wine-grower's frame".