As our long term patients know, we are passionate about reducing our impact on the environment and always look for ways to do more towards this at our practices and in our homes.
As we have been shortlisted in the Sustainable Practice category in the upcoming Optician Awards, we feel it’s time we started to try and effect change within our profession on a bigger scale than within our own four walls.
So, yesterday we started emailing the letter below to all of our frame suppliers.
When we receive frames for putting on display here, the frames usually come in a plastic wallet. Some of the more forward thinking companies have switched to “compostable” wallets but as with lots of products labelled as “compostable” recently, we have found over the years that these wallets do not actually decompose in a home composter.
Other companies are now using “recyclable” PE-LD wallets but these can’t be recycled in every area so surely reuse would be a good option until such time as a protective wrap made from fully recyclable paper is introduced as the norm?
As yet, to our knowledge, none of the companies that we buy frames from has mentioned a scheme for reuse similar to the scheme that we propose in this letter (and we do know that in most cases, the suppliers probably receive them in the plastic bags from the factories) but we know that our suppliers are all absolutely lovely, and are all themselves working towards being greener.. so we’re sure they will be happy to help us put something in place to close the loop!
We’ll keep you informed!
