@ai6yr ok, I’ve always wondered how recycled eyeglasses work. Are they able to somehow find someone with your prescription or do they just harvest the frames or what?
I'd be happy to tell you what we are doing to recycle eyeglasses in the South SF Bay Area (Lions District 4-C6, which includes Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito, and Monterey Counties).
(Source: I'm a >30 year member of a Lions Club in San Jose, CA, even though I now live in Oregon.)
We are fortunate that in addition to collecting used eyeglasses locally, a major retailer sends us their used or returned eyeglasses. We have just passed 700,000 pairs sorted in the
We collect them, sort out the scratched/broken/missing-a-piece eyeglasses, and recycle the parts if we can.
The good eyeglasses are washed and dried, and the lens strength is measured on a lensometer. The eyeglasses are labeled and sorted into boxes for distribution.
The sorting and cleaning is all done by volunteers: Lions & family members, medical students, sorority members, retirees, etc.
Next, optometrists and technicians volunteer for eye clinics
often in Mexico or Central America (our club's optometrist has traveled as far as Vietnam in the recent past). Local Lions Clubs in those countries host the visitors for up to a week, advertise and organize the eye clinic, and help with logistics. In four or five days, we may give out 1,000 or more pairs of used eyeglasses to people, many of whom may never have been able to get eyeglasses before. We have a another partnership with an online retailer** who fills
difficult prescriptions that we don't have in our recycled eyeglass collection.
We have also begun distributing eyeglasses at eye clinics within our district in California, trying to reach poor/underserved individuals & communities.
*I'm answering this from memory at 2am when I should be sleeping instead, but I think these numbers are correct. No, we cannot name the retailer.
**I'm not sure which one right now, I don't want to credit the wrong retailer.
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