28 January 2019
With 8m tonnes of plastic ending up in the ocean each year, by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish. It is staggering facts like these that are increasingly waking the world up to the environmental impact of modern living.
At ACUVUE® we share these growing concerns and are working hard to ensure that we play our role in making a brighter future for everyone. Contact lenses themselves may be small in size, but over 725m are thrown away each year in the UK alone,1 with 15% of that contact lens waste flushed away.2
Convention dictated that contact lenses were too small and flimsy to recycle – they said no but we said yes. Working together with our recycling partners at TerraCycle® we have been able to harness the best of innovative thinking and develop a programme to recycle both the lenses and the individual packs. Launching now, this programme will be free for our partner opticians and their patients to use, providing a valuable service and helping everyone play a small but significant part in building a better, brighter future.
Contact lenses themselves may be small in size, but over 725m are thrown away each year in the UK alone
Introducing the ACUVUE Contact Lens Recycling Programme
At ACUVUE,® we strive to be at the forefront of innovation and technology in everything that we do. This is no different when it comes to meeting our responsibilities to the environment, our partner opticians, our staff and, of course, the patients who use our products. It is because we take these responsibilities seriously, that we’re very proud to launch the ACUVUE® Contact Lens Recycle Programme with our recycling partner TerraCycle,® a world leader in recycling techniques. Together, we collect used contact lenses, their blister packs and the foils. They are then recycled, ready to be made into something new.
Join us and make a difference
It may seem like something small, but it adds up to a big difference, so join us today. Contact your ACUVUE® Account Manager, sign up to the free programme and become an official contact lens recycling partner – it’s that simple. We’ll even give you all the tools required to let your patients know and start recycling their used contact lenses.
It’s also easy for patients to take part. They collect their used contact lenses and packaging and simply drop them in the special collection bins in-store, or they can download a freepost label and post the lenses and packaging to us. The details and more information can be found on our website.
Find out more about our partner TerraCycle® on its website.
References
- JJV data on file. Analysis based on 3rd Party Data, 2018
- Research was conducted by One Poll with 1000 contact lens wearers in the UK in November 2018.
ACUVUE® is a registered trademark of Johnson & Johnson Medical Ltd. ©Johnson & Johnson Medical Ltd, 2018. Copyright TerraCycle® 2018. All rights reserved.
