My life in lenses

[dreamshark]

It is SOOO HARD to throw away old glasses! I mean, they are practically a part of your body for years, before suddenly transitioning to obsolescent junk. So you tuck them away just in case you need them for something and one day you unearth a cache of 3 or 4 decades worth of abandoned eyewear.

Comments

[sraun]

There are various places that will take old glasses and get them to someone who can use that prescription. The organization I know was doing this was the Lions Club - they sent them to Africa. They're still doing it - https://www.mnlionsvisionfoundation.org/used-eyeglass-program/. There's a list of drop-off locations there.

CostCo Optical will also take donated glasses. They work with Assist International.

[dreamshark]

I'm afraid that eyeglass recycling is almost 100% wish-cycling. Look it up.

If you have a very simple prescription with the same correction in each eye it is possible that the glasses might be usable, but glasses like that are so cheap to produce that the labor involved in recycling is barely worth it. Nobody wants glasses like mine (and probably yours) - with complicated prescriptions and wide variances between the two eyes.

[spiderplanet]

I remember "Get a new pair, keep the old ones in case the new one breaks." It's a good system until it isn't.

Since I got laser eye surgery, I only use reading glasses, so I have that many perfectly good and useable glasses scattered around the house. Would not recommend.