How to recycle contact lenses

About the Program

As part of our responsibility to our people, planet and communities, Specsavers is committed to setting the industry standard for tackling the recycling difficulties related to optical products.

Contact lens blister packs are made up of polypropylene (plastic) and aluminium foil, which are both recyclable, but they are too small for curbside recycling. That’s why we’ve partnered with Opticycle, who have developed an end‑to‑end recycling solution for contact lens blister packs, ensuring they can be responsibly recycled and made into new products.

Recycling contact lens blister packs through Opticycle allows us to extract valuable materials, reduce waste and minimise the environmental footprint associated with contact lens packaging waste.  

When you drop your contact lens blister packs into your local Specsavers store, we’ll make sure they’re diverted from landfill and sent to Opticycle’s processing facility. When they arrive at Opticycle, they’ll be emptied onto a sorting table for a visual quality control check to ensure there is no contamination. The blister packs are then broken down into fine particles to delaminate the materials. They then go through Opticycle’s proprietary separation process, which involves air density & electrostatic separation, to separate the plastic & aluminium. Once separated the aluminium goes into de‑oxidant pucks, which is part of the steel making process, and the plastic is passed onto end manufacturers as a raw material and made into different polypropylene products such as pot plants, wheel stops and cable covers.

We don’t just recycle our customer’s contact lens blister packs through Opticycle, we also recycle customer’s unwanted glasses that are returned to store as well as our own optical waste including frames, lenses, demo lenses, lens off‑cuts from the glazing process and contact lens blister packs, ensuring that 100% is diverted from landfill.

What should I do with the cardboard packaging?

The cardboard box that your contact lenses come in can be easily recycled through in your curbside co‑mingled recycling bin.

What should I do with my used contact lenses?

Contact lenses themselves are not biodegradable and are generally made from medical grade plastic‑type materials such as hydrogel, silicone hydrogel, or non‑hydrogel variants.

Unfortunately due to their small size, it’s not currently possible to recover and recycle contact lenses so the best way to dispose of them is through your general waste, where local authorities or licensed contractors can responsibly dispose of them.

It’s important that you never wash your used contact lenses down the sink or flush them down the toilet as this can lead to the plastics being discharged into marine environments and causing pollution.