Sustainability in sight

Photos courtesy of Eastman

Eastman, one of the world’s largest plastics producers, has worked with the eyewear industry for many years to support brands’ conversion to using recycled content, and has made more than a dozen partnership announcements since 2020 with eyewear brands that have opted to include the company’s molecularly recycled material produced at its facility in Kingsport, Tennessee.

“We’ve been supplying into that [the eyewear] industry for many years and with the molecular recycling facility, we were able to offer recycled content,” says Rachel Oakley, market segment manager, eyewear, at Eastman. “Historically, we’ve been at the back of the value chain, and if we look at what we’re doing now, it’s working with a lot of brands to support their conversion [to recycled content] and making sure they’re doing well.”

The Kingsport, Tennessee-based specialty materials company announced its first eyewear partnership in 2020 when Marchon Eyewear, Melville, New York, became the first eyewear company to produce and sell frames made using Eastman’s Acetate Renew, a molecularly recycled material made from hard-to-recycle mixed plastics.

Oakley says Eastman’s partnership with eyewear brands came at a time the industry was looking to move forward in terms of using recycled content. The company began by working with a range of luxury and premium brands, and the first project, she says, has been helping companies move through how they should go about selling the use of recycled content in their products.

Since the initial partnership with Marchon was announced in 2020, Eastman has announced collaborations with Mazzuchelli, United Creation, Thelios, the Polaroid and Under Armour brands via Safilo, Andy Wolf, the Paradigm brand via Kenmark, the Ferragamo brand via Marchon, the AllPoets brand via Etnia, Warby Parker, Mykita, the Vivienne Westwood brand via Mondottica, the Foster Grant brand via FGX and Otaaki.

As more brands adopt Eastman’s recycled content, the next step is making the entire eyewear industry more sustainable by finding ways to reduce the more than 5,000 metric tons per year of waste produced globally by manufacturing demo lenses, according to the 2019 Statista Eyewear Report.

The process

Eastman uses two key processes to produce its recycled content—carbon renewal technology and polyester renewal technology. Carbon renewal technology is a type of molecular or advanced recycling that processes hard-to-recycle plastics, with the exception of polyvinyl chloride, and breaks the material down into its molecular building blocks.

Industrial and preconsumer scrap, like that produced from the manufacturing of eyeglasses, is used as feedstock, as well as bottles, textiles, carpet, films and other plastics.

“At one point, we were using old hard hats,” Oakley says of Eastman’s feedstock.

Eastman produces its Acetate Renew as well as its Tritan copolyester and Tenite cellulosics for the eyewear industry. Most of the brands that have partnered with Eastman have opted for Acetate Renew, as it’s ideal for premium eyewear and prescription frames as well as being made from certified recycled and biobased materials, and because of this, many of Eastman’s initial partnerships have been with luxury brands.

Typically, Oakley says, glasses that range from $70 and higher are likely made from acetate because of its comfort and flexibility, but more and more optical retailers are experiencingwhat she calls a sustainability sensitivity.

“There aren’t many other options,” Oakley says of acetate in eyewear.

Both Mykita and Andy Wolf did a complete switch to 100-percent Acetate Renew, Oakley says, because the concept of maintaining the integrity of a luxury frame by using molecular recycling was appealing to the brands.

“You’re talking $400-plus per frame, and they really don’t want any risks,” Oakley says. “You don’t want to pay $400 per frame and then have something go wrong at that quality. … They really liked the Acetate Renew concept with the idea of the molecular recycling and getting the full performance.”

Incorporating its molecularly recycled products into a few luxury eyewear brands gave Eastman the chance to test the nervousness of the industry and allow time for the company to prove that brands could successfully make the switch. “A lot of companies say, ‘Well, maybe we’ll do a small collection,’” Oakley says.

Because brands viewed the switch as putting their reputation at stake, she explains, often many of the luxury brands would incorporate the recycled content in a limited collection to test how the market would react. “We spent a lot of time convincing the market, talking to them and reassuring them,” Oakley says.

"But Mykita just took a bold step," she says. "Literally, from one day to another, they stopped buying regular acetate."

“It’s perceived reality,” she adds of the brands’ reticence. “We know it’s not going to see a performance change, but there is a lot of concern over it, and we put a lot of effort into working with these designers and really making sure that we’re able to prove to them in whatever way makes them feel comfortable.”

After entering the luxury eyewear market, the next step was to break into the more affordable or everyday eyewear sector. “It’s great if somebody can spend $400 on a pair of glasses, but what about the regular people?" Oakley asks.

That’s where the Tenite and Tritan material comes into play, as those products are better suited for a broader range of eyewear types, including fashion sunwear, Oakley says, “That means we can go from everything from the $400 beautiful frames down to the $15 frames that you might pick up at Target with a pair of sunglasses.”

“By offering different products, we’ve been able to do pull-through into different sections of the market,” she adds. “The first part was really about how we get recycled content into the market, and the next action was how can we start providing a solution for the whole market.”

Demo lenses

Oakley says the most wasteful aspect of the eyewear industry is the manufacturing of demo lenses, which are used within the industry at retail outlets for display and try-on and to maintain frame shape and integrity while in transit. She estimates about 70 percent to 80 percent of the acetate used to make a pair of frames is disposed of, and, currently, Eastman consumes a very small quantity of that material.

“Those lenses go straight in the trash, so it’s a very visible issue,” she says.

Eastman announced in March 2020 a partnership with New York-based Warby Parker to molecularly recycle its demo lenses. The company says since the summer of 2021, discarded demo lenses from Warby Parker’s optical labs in Sloatsburg, New York, and Las Vegas have been sent to the Kingsport facility to be recycled using its Carbon Renewal Technology—the process with which Eastman creates Acetate Renew.

Warby Parker also has begun to source Acetate Renew for new eyewear, working toward a circular solution for a major problem in the eyewear industry.

“That’s pretty much been a proof of concept,” Oakley says of the partnership.

She says since the inception of the program, Eastman already has converted approximately 20 tons of demo lenses. “When you consider how lightweight they are, that’s a lot of glasses.”

The main focus was to prove the recycling process and take-back program were accessible and feasible as Eastman hopes to incorporate it into “everyday business.” Oakley says the company is reaching that point and feels comfortable with its systems, how the material processes through those systems and how Warby Parker and Eastman have been able to work together.

“It’s been a great collaboration,” she says. “I think the fact that you can wear glasses made from your demo lenses is such a great story.”

The challenge, however, is working through the various logistics that come with business and manufacturing partnerships. Oakley says Warby Parker has a “very nice, closed-[loop]” operation, which Eastman was looking for, but the company is exploring other options for take-back programs in the future.

“If you look at how glasses are made, they’ve obviously got a hole cut out of them and that’s all waste, so we’re trying to figure out how to get all that [material] back,” she adds.

Oakley says all the brands that have switched to sustainable materials are seeing strong growth. The brands that started with a small collection have begun to expand their recycled-content product offerings, as well.

“It started slowly because brands are nervous, asking, ‘Could this be true?’ Is this really right?’” she adds. “Then this coming year, the volume has increased a lot as brands feel confident, so we’re really seeing quite positive growth with this.”

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at mmcnees@gie.net.