Johnson & Johnson Vision (J&J) and TerraCycle joined forces earlier this year to launch the Acuvue Contact Lens Recycle Programme across the UK. This is the UK’s first free nationwide programme to enable customers to easily recycle contact lenses, as well as the blister and foil packaging.
The scheme is completely free of charge, through drop off bins situated in various opticians practices around the country. People can also recycle them through a postal collection service, where they can download a shipping label from either J&J’s Acuvue or TerraCycle’s websites and arrange a home collection, also free of charge.
The scheme aims to reduce plastic waste in landfill and water by making it easy to dispose of used contact lenses and packaging by creating partnerships with Boots Opticians and a range of independent opticians practices to provide more than 1,000 public drop-off recycling points across the country. The recycling points are available to all contact lens wearers, regardless of what brand they use.
Environmental impact
The creation of a programme of this kind follows many reports of the environmental impact of single use plastics like contact lenses and how wearers are disposing of them in ways that harm the environment, as a recent study by Arizona State University found that five different polymers that can be found in contact lenses were matched to microorganisms in some wastewater treatment facilities.
Optical Express recently carried out a survey into how contact lens wearers dispose of their lenses, which discovered more than 750 million contact lenses were disposed of down the drain or into landfill every year in the UK. The survey also found that 97% of contact lens users are damaging the environment by disposing of them in this way, with one in four regularly throwing contact lenses down the toilet or drain and only 3% of people recycling them. People from Nottingham were the least environmentally friendly with their contact lenses, with 98% of people always throwing their used lenses in the bin or down the drain. The best performing city for contact lens recycling was Bristol, however 87% of people never recycle their lenses.
Clinical services director at Optical Express Stephen Hannan says: ‘Everyone knows we need to take urgent action to reduce the amount of plastic we’re using in every aspect of our lives. We all have choices in terms of vision correction, whether that’s to wear glasses more often or get laser eye surgery, but whatever you do, don’t throw your contact lenses down the drain.’ He also highlights that the contact lens disposal situation is even worse than had been previously thought and that Optical Express is asking those who choose to continue to use plastic contact lenses to dispose of them responsibly.
The multiple has set up its own separate contact lens recycling scheme in its practices in conjunction with TerraCycle, due to the Acuvue scheme having no immediate plans to extend its distribution as it is able to provide national coverage with its current collection bins.
Research findings
J&J also undertook research in this area, finding that approximately 20% of the UK’s 3.7 million contact lens wearers admitted to flushing their lenses down the toilet or in the sink. The research also highlighted that 77% of contact lens wearers said they would recycle them if they could and that over a third (39%) of users are not sure if they can, or believe they cannot, recycle lenses.
Acuvue Contact Lens Recycle Programme collection box
Jakob Sveen, Northern European Cluster director and general manager of the UK and Ireland at J&J, says that the team are pleased with how well the contact lens recycling programme is going so far.
‘We launched the Acuvue Contact Lens Recycle Programme in January based on the insight that contact lens wearers weren’t sure if they could recycle lenses. The positive response and participation of contact lens wearers shows that there is now growing awareness and appetite for recycling lenses and reducing plastic waste. To date, more than two million contact lenses and packaging have been recycled through the programme.’
Sveen explains that J&J partnered with TerraCycle to develop the Acuvue Contact Lens Recycle Programme because they specialise in recycling those hard to recycle materials. ‘Prior to this programme, apart from a handful of consumers who work directly with TerraCycle and pay to recycle their lenses, it has not been possible to recycle contact lenses of any kind in the UK. This is because the waste is not widely recyclable through domestic collections given the need to separate different parts of the lenses’ blister packaging for different recycling parts, for example the plastic foils and the metal tops,’ he says.
‘We created the contact lens recycling scheme so that for the first time nationwide, UK consumers can recycle their contact lenses free of charge. The programme aims to reduce plastic waste in landfills and waterways by providing a simple and practical alternative to the UK’s 3.7 million contact wearers, including the 20% [J&J funded One Poll research with 1,000 contact lens wearers in the UK in November 2018] of wearers who reported that they currently dispose of their lenses by flushing them down the toilet or the sink. The end result will see the recycled contact lenses, blister and foil packaging turned into new products such as outdoor furniture and plastic lumber.’
Nationwide network
Currently, the Acuvue Contact Lens Recycle Programme has a network of more than 1,100 public access drop-off locations in 613 Boots Opticians practices and various selected independent optician practices across the UK.
Sveen says: ‘Every part of our contact lens development is recyclable. However, in previous disposal schemes, blister packaging would fall through the cracks and end up in landfill. That is why we wanted to partner with TerraCycle to make a comprehensive contact lens and packaging scheme possible, for the first time in the UK. Despite the success of the scheme, we know that some contact lens wearers are unaware of how to dispose of them responsibly. There continues to be lack of awareness for how to dispose of contact lenses. We believe it is important for practices to help spread the word and increase awareness with wearers, that there is a recycling solution available to them. We share the public’s passion in reducing the amount of plastics in the environment and look forward to our industry and the public working together to make a difference.’
Stephen Clarke, head of communications at TerraCycle Europe, agrees that the Acuvue Contact Lens Recycle Programme has been very successful so far. He says: ‘There has been a very positive response from the public, opticians and the media to the launch of this UK first recycling initiative. The total number of pairs of contact lens waste sent in for recycling is always shown in real time on the Contact Lens Recycle Programme page – currently this is over 1,227,000 pairs – which equates to well over two million actual individual contact lenses and pieces of associated waste such as blister packs.’ 
Typical waste produced from wearing contact lenses
Clarke explains that TerraCycle was approached by J&J’s Acuvue, who was looking for a recycling solution to offer its consumers. He says: ‘TerraCycle is always happy to work with brands as by partnerships like this we are able to offer a free solution to consumers, whereas before we could only offer a paid-for solution for contact lenses in the form of our Zero Waste Box offering. The aim with this scheme, as with all of the TerraCycle free recycling programmes, is to prevent as much waste as possible from ending up in landfills and incineration. As awareness of the problem of plastic pollution grows, it is important that consumers are able to recycle as much waste as possible and contact lenses have historically been the source of much confusion when it comes to their disposal, as they are not currently recycled by councils as part of their kerbside recycling collections. We are therefore very happy to have partnered with Acuvue to launch the first UK-wide recycling scheme for contact lenses and contact lens packaging so that consumers now have an environmentally friendly solution for disposing of their used soft disposable contact lenses and associated packaging.’
TerraCycle specialises in the recycling of hard-to-recycle streams of waste, so the majority of the recycling programmes that it launches are UK firsts. Clarke says that ‘while contact lenses and contact lens packaging are technically recyclable, they are made up of a mix of materials which make them difficult to separate from other waste streams and costly to recycle.
TerraCycle has the ability to offer a free solution for consumers of contact lenses as Acuvue has taken the initiative to sponsor a programme and cover the costs of transporting and processing the waste, as well as a charitable donation for each shipment of weight sent in by the participating optician practice.’
