The Swedish brand EOE has launched a collection of eyewear and sunglasses produced in a material made from old recycled frames. In collaboration with a number of industry partners and organizations such as Nordic eyewear company Synsam and Vision for All, EOE has set up stations to collect old glasses and give them a new life. In a factory in northern Sweden the worn out glasses are dismantled by hand and sorted according to colour and quality. A unique recycling process has been developed by EOE Eyewear together with a Swedish research institute. The frames are shattered into small pieces and the metallic parts are filtered out. The result from the the ‘regrinding’ is millions of small, irregular pieces of acetate, to make a new raw material. 98% of the old eyewear material is recycled.
The millions of acetate pieces are put together into new bricks, using high pressure and heat. The new frames are cut out from the bricks and put together with metallic pieces made in Swedish recycled steel. In this way, a pair of ”new” glasses with a unique history is brought to life. Regrind sunglasses were launched in Autumn/Winter 2019 and new ophthalmic frames – three bestselling shapes from the EOE collections – have been added from January 2020.
“When we started EOE Eyewear in 2010 it was with a sustainable goal at once and we started to use biodegradable acetate,” says Emilia Lindmark, EOE Eyewear’s co-founder. “We have been working for over three years to take it to the next level and to find a way to break new ground and close the loop. We are proud to present the first of its kind, a world unique innovation where we can take broken and worn out eyewear and turn them into new designs.”
At Mido, EOE Eyewear will exhibit in Hall 6, Stand B19.