Question,

what to do with 40,000 tons of left over scallops shells produced annually?

as a by-product of the trade in scallops, the above photograph taken in August 2022, Sarufutsu Village in Hokkaido, is one of Japan’s leading producers of scallops has the problem of disposing of them, so the village teamed up with Osaka-based chemicals company Koushi Chemical, who developed a way to process the leftover shells into a material they called “karastic” (a combination of the words kara, meaning shell, and plastic),

the material was then handed over to design studio Quantum, who created the helmet inspired by the ribbed structure of a shell, they called it Hotamet, from the words hotate (scallop) and helmet,

Hotamet is currently available through Japanese crowdfunding site Makuake where it’s already surpassed its initial funding goal, the product is primely aimed at cyclist, given that Japan will become one of the few countries in the world to mandate the use of helmets when bicycling starting April of 2023, 

it seems that this helmet arrived just in time, what a neat way to use a left over product of the scallop trade, now here is a thought, I wonder if the same idea could be used for the UK's cockle trade?