Eyewear companies and suppliers highlighted how they were leading on sustainability during a panel discussion at Optician’s Eyes on Sustainability conference at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh on November 5-6. They discussed developing a company ethos, sourcing sustainable frame materials and investing in corporate social responsibility projects.
Rachel Oakley, global eyewear market manager at Eastman, pictured right, spoke about the material supplier’s sustainability strategy. This included a commitment to mitigate climate change, mainstream circularity and caring for people and society.
She highlighted findings from a consumer survey commissioned by Eastman in June 2022 of 4,800 people from the US, UK, France and Germany. Oakley said that sustainable materials mattered because customers want them with 64% of UK consumers who said they were important but only 39% said they were easy to find.
Comparably, 59% of US consumers said sustainable materials were important, 76% in France and 77% in Germany with all three countries achieving a higher percentage for how easy sustainable materials were to find (45%, 49% and 52% respectively).
Oakley said this was a missed opportunity in the UK because consumers felt loyalty to brands with sustainable credentials. When consumers were asked how they defined sustainable eyewear, 74% said materials, 18% said recyclable, 9% said production, 9% said durability and 4% said safety.
Oakley said it was important to define what is meant by sustainable materials. For eyewear, this meant what it was made from, such as bio-based or recycled materials, and whether the product was biodegradable or recyclable. She highlighted 300 million metric tonnes of plastic was produced globally and 260m metric tonnes of plastics were disposed with 40% ending up in landfill, 25% was incinerated, 19% leaked into the environment, 16% was collected for recycling and 12% was actually recycled.
This clearly presented another missed opportunity, Oakley said, and noted molecular recycling as an area of potential to tackle the remaining 88% of hard to recycle plastic waste. She explained that by breaking waste plastic down to its molecular level, the amount of fossil feedstocks required was reduced and recycled, high grade quality materials could be created that were indistinguishable from traditional plastics. Eastman was committed to recycling more than 225m kgs of hard to recycle waste plastic annually by 2030 via molecular recycling technologies and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
Bird is the word
Ed Bird, co-founder of Bird Eyewear, pictured right, said the frames brand sought to create better eyewear for a better world. He identified materials, supply chains and end of life were problems for sustainability in eyewear, which Bird sought to counter by innovating with materials.
The British brand used bio-acetate, cork and steel, which Bird and his co-founding brothers had experimented with over the years. He said when exploring the use of different materials, it was ok to fail because it opened the door to create and innovate.
This philosophy had been extended to how the company carried out business as evidenced through the B Corp certification it achieved in 2020. Bird described the rigorous process to attain B Corp status in order to prove the brand’s credentials and become the first eyewear brand in the UK to do so.
He noted that only 6,000 companies globally were B Corp and over 250,000 had applied. Bird scored 89 for its overall B Impact Score on its first attempt but had since increased this rating to 126. Bird Eyewear sought to add more sustainable measures for its partner optical practices to incorporate, such as collection boxes for repurposing frames.
The company was developing waste and manufacturing streams at its headquarters in Devon and had developed a box that fit with a practice’s branding for Bird to then sort and fix the frames. A new zero waste case had been made from old wheelie bins and the company was looking to start producing frames from this material in 2024.
Founding philosophy
Harvey Dhadwar, distributor of Rolf Spectacles from UK Eyewear Distribution, told attendees about the foundations of sustainability that the Austrian brand was built on. Rolf’s philosophy was to leave a better planet than the one it found by using plant-based materials and an ethos of rethink, reuse and reduce.
Dhadwar explained that Rolf started in a garage with a milking machine that was converted into a device to create wooden frames. It now operated out of a factory in Tyrol where it took 80 steps to create sustainable frames. Rolf launched wood frames in 2009, which was carefully sourced from sustainably managed forests before launching stone eyewear in 2011.
The latest material it added to its sustainable repertoire was castor bean oil, which was used in its Substance collection. Castor bean oil can grow up to six metres in four months and was then ground into a powder and used as an eyewear material.
Supporting schemes
Last to present was Panos Nicolaou, optometrist and managing director at Traders and Makers, who distributed in the UK for Einstoffen and Vasuma. Swiss brand Einstoffen only used FSC-certified wood and biodegradable acetate in its eyewear, as well as taking a carbon neutral approach via offsetting. Einstoffen embarked on an offsetting project, which it did by funding international verified climate protection projects.
The eyewear brand also avoided and reduced its carbon footprint and have had its emissions calculated by a third party. Nicolaou said Einstoffen supported sustainable development projects, such as local drinking water supplies, creating jobs and enhancing biodiversity. Initiatives included the Mountain Forest Project in Switzerland, which sought to preserve native forests in 40 locations across the country.
A project in Rwanda aimed to reduce the amount of cooking on open fires because of its low energy efficiency. Clean cooking stoves have been supplied that make better use of energy and save fuel and reduce emissions. Nicolaou then discussed Swedish eyewear brand Vasuma, which used biodegradable acetate and sustainable metal in its frames. He said Vasuma sourced Mazzucchelli’s M49 acetate, which was bio-based and biodegradable, meeting prerequisites for compostability set by the standard ISO 17088:2012.
Vasuma had also worked with Eastman to use its Acetate Renew material, which reduces harmful greenhouse gases by up to 50% compared to traditional manufacturing processes, in a new collection launching in 2024. Beyond materials, Vasuma launched corporate social responsibility projects, such as a special collection of eyewear that supported Save the Children and the Glasses for Refugees scheme, which supported those affected by the war in Syria.
Audience questions
During a question and answer session, Bird was asked how optical practices can set about achieving B Corp. He said an initial step would be to complete an impact assessment and identify areas to improve, which would give practices a roadmap to follow.
Oakley was asked about waste created by demo lenses, which she said were usually made from the hard-to-recycle material, PMA.
She highlighted Eastman’s work with Warby Parker in the US to reclaim dummy lenses and break them down to molecular level to be reused and to create Acetate Renew, which was 60% bio-based and 40% recycled content.