How you can help the environment as a contact lens wearer

Contact lenses are a marvelous eyewear innovation, unfortunately they produce quite a bit of waste. Most contact lens wearers may not even know there’s a correct way to minimizes contacts’ impact on the environment.  

Fortunately, there are a few ways to get rid of your old, crusty contacts. Let’s talk about them.  

Proper disposal  

It’s important to dispose of your contacts properly. Luckily, your first instinct to just throw them away is correct. Never flush them or put them down the sink. Keeping contacts out of the water supply is incredibly important as they will eventually break down into microplastics which enter the water cycle. No one wants that.  

Taking good care of your contacts includes proper disposal and so simply tossing them in the garbage instead of flushing them makes a world of difference.  

Recycling options 

Over the last few years, Bausch and Lomb has spent a lot of time and energy developing a robust recycling program for contact lens wearers. Since contacts cannot be recycled through regular recycling programs, they invented their own. They have locations across the country to make recycling your lenses as easy possible. Their site even has a handy zip code lookup to see the nearest recycling location to you. Both contact lenses and the blister packs they come in are recyclable at these locations.  

Their program has already recycled more than 187,000 pounds of contacts. Those tiny pieces of plastic really do add up. Simply recycling your contacts, or properly disposing of them in the garbage, goes a long way in prevent trillions of particles of microplastics from the water supply.  It’s an easy way to make a huge difference. Plus, your lenses will get to live a second life by being upcycled. If there isn’t a recycling center near you, no worries! Bausch and Lomb offers remote recycling through shipping, they just request you save up a year’s worth of contacts before sending them out. You can learn more about their program and how to send in old contacts on their site.  

Whether you choose to recycle your lenses or simply throw them away, keeping them out of waterways does a tremendous amount to help the environment.