Glasses And Their Impact On The Environment
The impact our environmental issues have had on our society is undeniable. Most people are more conscious of their environmental footprint and therefore purchasing behaviour is changing towards a more eco-friendly direction. Biodegradable, recycled, and vegan products are more requested than ever. Since eyewear is such an essential part of our day, finding ways to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly can have a significant impact. So stay tuned, if you want to find out how to be stylish and sustainable with your eyewear.
The impact of eyewear
Glasses or contact lenses are a part of most people’s day-to-day life, making them an unavoidable purchase. While glasses are usually worn for a longer period of time, they still end up in the bin if they break or go out of style. Disposing of glasses the right way isn’t as easy as it sounds, however. If your glasses are still intact, the easiest solution is to donate them to people in need. This way, they don’t immediately end up in landfills and give someone who might not be able to afford it, the chance of a proper vision. Unfortunately, recycling glasses tends to be a bit more complicated. As frames are usually made of a specific resin material, they need to be taken to specific recycling plants.
Similarly, contact lenses can’t be recycled since they are made of silicone and polymer gels, that don’t decompose. Our oceans and landscapes are already filling up with more plastic than ever and according to recent studies , flushing contact lenses down the drain contributes significantly to microplastic pollution. The environmental impact contact lenses have is easily overlooked yet replacing them on a daily or weekly basis adds up quickly.
What alternatives are there?
While you might be trying to decrease your carbon footprint, finding an appropriate solution for an essential part of life such as your eyewear might not be easy. Fortunately, more and more businesses are going in the right direction of being more environmentally friendly and finding solutions to decrease plastic.
If you are wearing contact lenses on a daily basis but are looking for an eco-friendly solution, you might be surprised to find that glasses are more sustainable. While getting glasses for the first time can be a little daunting, we’ve written a full guide on how to choose the right pair of glasses. However, if you want to take it a step further, there are more options available to be even more environmentally friendly than our regular range of glasses.
If you already own glasses and looking for new ones, Glasses2You is introducing the Waterhaul Collection to take sustainability a step further.
Waterhaul Recycled Glasses
Waterhaul’s mission is to remove as much waste as possible from our oceans and recycle the retrieved plastic into stylish glasses. The most common yet destructive forms of plastic in our oceans are abandoned fishing nets as they are responsible for a phenomenon called ‘ghost fishing’. This refers to an ongoing loop of entrapment due to trapped marine life attracting more species to also end up entangled in these abandoned nets. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is a never-ending cycle as these nets are made out of plastic and therefore will not degrade, catching and killing marine life indefinitely. Over 650,000 marine animals lose their lives every year due to lost fishing equipment and the loss of their aquatic habitats.
To make fashionable glasses out of fishing nets as well as ghost gear and other marine plastic, they first need to be collected off the oceans and coastline around the UK. The next step involves the separation of the recovered netting and gear by polymer type and further recycling through a mechanical process of shredding, washing, and agglomeration. This results in 100% recycled raw material ready to be moulded into fashionable eyewear made out of this sustainable plastic.
Every pair of our Waterhaul Collection does not only come with a frame made out of 100% recycled fishing nets but also a sustainable folding cork case. Additionally, Waterhaul frames come with a lifetime warranty as they are made of the strongest plastic materials found in our oceans.
By purchasing one of our Waterhaul glasses frames, you’re making a change by saving our oceans, one pair of glasses at a time. Looking fashionable with high-quality, sustainable, recycled frames has never been easier. So take a look at the Waterhaul Collection to find your next pair of glasses.
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