Responsible consumerism, when glasses go eco – EYESEEMAG

Two great young brands are currently making glasses out of plastic ocean refuse. Karün uses the plastic from discarded fishing nets found on the Chilean coast, while Dick Moby makes glasses from recycled plastic bottles and biodegradable acetate.

Hemp was one of the first plants discovered in France, well before the Middle Ages, and has today become one of the key plants in the sustainable development movement. Growing hemp is healthy and completely natural, hemp is good for the earth and consumes very little water, absorbs carbon and can grow at all latitudes in all temperate regions of the globe. The multi-function plant is used in textiles, isolation, to make paper pulp, as an oil in cosmetics and food and, for a few years now, to make glasses. Sam Whitten founded the brand Hemp, made exclusively in Great Britain, where he makes glasses by putting together different layers of hemp and linen fiber, that are then covered in a bio-ecological resin.

Horn is also slowly starting to make an appearance on the glasses market. Buffalo horn is mainly used, as a very high-quality, completely natural and traceable material. Soft to the touch and very light, horn is extremely comfortable to wear and it’s also an unstable material, on which marks only remain for a few weeks. France’s horn specialist is Cornibus, a label that works horn in all ways, as well as Xavier Christin, a ‘meilleur ouvrier de France’ glasses-maker, who has worked with buffalo and zebu horn to make bespoke spectacles.

Another French brand has had the crazy idea to spend a year in research and development to create glasses made out of seaweed. An inexhaustible, quickly renewable and compostable crop, seaweed does not need any chemical intervention to grow, nor does it consume any water. The label is Naoned, based in Brittany, and the collection is called Dôn, which literally means ‘sea goddess’.