I obviously don’t know the condition of the eyesight of those of you reading this – but my eyesight is really awful. On top of that, I live in the south which is essentially HQ for seasonal allergies. Due to all of that – I wear daily contacts. And I feel so painfully wasteful using them once and throwing them away every day, along with the packages they come in.
Some 45 million Americans wear contact lenses. Of them, 15 million wear daily disposables. Statistics show that 10 to 15 percent of those 45 million are flushing their contacts down the toilet or sink! Between six and 10 metric tons of plastic lenses are ending up in U.S. wastewater plants every year, adding to the problem of microplastics in oceans, lakes and even commercial bottled water. Click here to read more horrifying pieces of information on this subject!
I have found the solution to the guilt! Terracycle now has a partnership with Bausch + Lomb to recycle any brand of contacts and the blister packs they come in! And not just recycle – they are able to take the materials of the contacts and the plastic portion of the blister packs and turn it into recycled plastic material!
The process is very simple – just create a container where you put all blister packs and contacts, print a free shipping label, collect them for as long as your container allows, and mail them away! Or you can drop them off at a nearby participating optometrist’s office. Click here to either sign up OR find an optometrist near you!
This is one of my most wasteful areas, and I cannot express how excited I am to finally have a better option for what to do with the trash!
Terracycle has a lot of different recycling partnerships, and I will be writing more blog posts about their programs in the future – but I highly recommend giving their website a quick browse. Maybe they have a program for something that helps you reduce the waste you create! Comment below if there is a program you see that interests you!
Elephant Trunk Moving Supplies is doing its part to reduce the number of cardboard boxes and tape ending up in landfills by offering our reusable moving boxes and supplies! We have prevented thousands of cardboard boxes from ending up in landfills, and made hundreds of people really happy with their moving experience thanks to our service!