Old prescription glasses often end up forgotten in drawers, cupboards and gloveboxes. Glasses are made from a mix of materials, including different plastics and metals, which means they cannot be recycled through your household recycling bin.
Instead of throwing them in the rubbish bin, you can take unwanted prescription and non-prescription glasses to be recycled through the Opticycle program.
Many optometrists, including Specsavers, participate in the program. Some participating stores also accept contact lens blister packs for recycling.
Once collected, the glasses are sent for processing, where the lenses are separated from the frames and the different materials are recovered for recycling. These materials are then used to create new products, including sustainable building materials such as pavers, bricks, blocks and eco-aggregates.
Metals are also recovered and recycled into new applications.
