How Sustainable Eyewear is Reshaping the Eyewear Industry
By Coleman Opticians
There’s a quiet revolution happening in eyewear and it’s one worth knowing about.
The frames you choose to put on your face are increasingly being made from materials that have never touched a drop of crude oil.
The factories that make them are running on solar power.
And the companies behind your favourite brands are replanting forests, recycling production waste, and rethinking the entire way glasses are designed, made, and disposed of.
Sustainable Eyewear is the buzz word for 2026 and for all the right reasons.
This isn’t greenwashing. It’s a genuine, industry-wide shift and at Coleman Opticians, we think it matters.
Here’s what’s actually happening in the world of sustainable eyewear.
Why Eyewear Had a Sustainability Problem
For most of the last century, spectacle frames were made from two things: petroleum-based plastics and metal alloys.
Both have significant environmental costs. Traditional acetate, that’s the shiny, colourful plastic used in so many classic frames, is derived from crude oil and takes hundreds of years to break down.
Metal frames require energy-intensive mining and processing. And at the end of their life, most frames end up in landfill.
The eyewear industry is a big one. IT’s enormous.
Globally, hundreds of millions of pairs of glasses are sold every year. That’s a lot of petroleum-derived plastic. A lot of packaging. A lot of waste and no emphasis on sustainable eyewear
But things are changing fast.
What is Bio-Acetate and Why Does it Matter?
Bio-acetate is probably the most talked-about material innovation in modern eyewear, and it deserves the attention.
Traditional acetate is made using petrol-based plasticisers. Bio-acetate replaces those fossil-fuel inputs with plant-based alternatives — most commonly cellulose derived from sustainably sourced wood pulp or cotton, combined with plasticisers made from natural oils like maize. In its raw form, it’s certified biodegradable, breaking down up to 150 times faster than conventional plastic. It’s also hypoallergenic, flexible, and strong — meaning it doesn’t sacrifice performance for principle.
Bird Sustainable Eyewear
one of the UK’s most pioneering sustainable eyewear brands
We’re proud to stock these at Coleman Opticians. Bird Eyewear has developed their own proprietary bio-acetate formula called Plantix.
Made from plant cellulose rather than crude oil, their bio-acetate frames are not only adjustable and durable, they also produce 50% less CO₂ in manufacture compared to standard petroleum-based plastic frames.
To put that in real terms: choosing bio-acetate frames is roughly equivalent to not driving 70 miles in a car. That’s a great reason to go for a sustainable eyewear brand.
Bird was also the first UK eyewear company to become a certified B Corporation back in 2020, and they’re currently the highest-scoring B Corp in the global eyewear industry. That certification isn’t handed out for a nice-sounding mission statement — it requires rigorous verification of social and environmental performance across the entire business.
Recycled Acetate: Giving Old Material New Life in the Sustainable Eyewear Sector
Bio-acetate isn’t the only innovation making waves. Recycled acetate is another approach — one that takes existing acetate waste and reprocesses it into new frames using advanced technology.
EssilorLuxottica, the world’s largest eyewear group and the company behind brands including Ray-Ban and Oakley, has pioneered what’s known as Carbon Renewal Technology to produce recycled acetate with verified recycled content. This means the production waste that would previously have been discarded is recaptured and given a second life as part of a new pair of glasses.
It’s a meaningful step toward what the industry calls a circular economy — a system designed so that materials stay in use for as long as possible, rather than being used once and thrown away.
Bio-Nylon and Recycled Nylon: The Other Side of the Frame
Acetate gets most of the headlines, but nylon is equally important. Many sports frames and lightweight everyday glasses are made from nylon — a petroleum-derived plastic traditionally produced from coal and crude oil.
Bio-nylon replaces fossil-fuel inputs with bio-based raw materials, significantly reducing the carbon footprint of production. Recycled nylon, meanwhile, takes production waste — the offcuts and sprues left over from injection moulding — and reprocesses them into new material for sustainable eyewear.
EssilorLuxottica have been particularly active here. Their R&D teams in Agordo, Italy spent years testing whether nylon could be recycled and reused without compromising quality. The answer was yes — and they found it could be safely reused up to seven times. Their Agordo plant, which has received independent sustainability certification, now runs an in-house process to recycle nylon scraps back into the production cycle. The first product to come from this work was a 100% recycled nylon frame under the Emporio Armani label.
The group uses around 800–900 tonnes of nylon a year. Getting that into a recycling loop — rather than landfill — is no small thing.
Eyes on Circularity: Sustainable Eyewear is the Big Picture at EssilorLuxottica
EssilorLuxottica is the company behind many of the most recognisable names in eyewear — Ray-Ban, Oakley, Persol, and many others.
Their sustainability programme, Eyes on the Planet, contains a dedicated strand called Eyes on Circularity, and the ambition is substantial: to shift from virgin fossil-based materials to bio-based and recycled materials, and to embed eco-design into all product development.
They’ve also commissioned the first-ever Life Cycle Assessment for bio-acetate in the eyewear industry, which is a detailed scientific study, carried out in partnership with Italian acetate specialist Mazzucchelli 1849, that maps the full environmental impact of bio-based materials from raw material to finished frame.
This kind of rigorous transparency matters, because it goes beyond brand messaging and into verifiable data.
On the energy side, EssilorLuxottica has invested heavily in onsite renewable energy across their manufacturing sites worldwide.
In 2024, their renewable energy consumption grew by 65% and accounted for 58% of total energy used across the group.
They’ve installed photovoltaic solar plants across ten sites in nine countries including the UK, France, Italy, Portugal, and the US.
Over the next five years, they plan to expand these to generate more than 95,000 megawatt-hours of renewable electricity per year.
That translates to a reduction of more than 54,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually.
They’ve also made a commitment to reducing the environmental cost of getting products to customers, shifting transportation away from air freight where possible, and working with distribution partners to offer lower-carbon delivery options.
Beyond the factory gates, EssilorLuxottica has invested in a major forest restoration project in the Dolomites in northern Italy close to their main production plant in Agordo.
They’ve planted thousands of new trees and protecting existing ones to support local biodiversity.
Silhouette: Carbon-Neutral Production. Ahead of Schedule and great sustainable eyewear.
Austrian brand Silhouette, renowned for their ultra-lightweight frames, has been one of the most progressive manufacturers in Europe when it comes to reducing emissions.
Their eyewear production has been independently verified as carbon-neutral since September 2022, a target most companies have set for 2030.
They got there eight years early.
More significantly, they’ve achieved this through genuine reduction rather than simply buying carbon offsets.
Over seven years, they cut their CO₂ emissions from manufacturing by more than 50%, independently verified by TÜV Austria.
Their newest material innovation is SPX® Green+, used in the Clear Sky collection.
This bio-circular material made from organic waste including agricultural and forestry by-products uses no fossil inputs whatsoever.
Their associated brands Neubau and Evil Eye are doing the same, with the ECO PPX material in Evil Eye sport frames made entirely from bio-circular sources like tree bark and straw.
Silhouette’s production site in Linz is located in a protected water zone, which gives them a particularly sharp focus on water treatment and environmental responsibility.
Their photovoltaic solar installations at the Linz site recently passed a milestone of one million kilograms of CO₂ saved since installation in 2020.
What Does This Mean for You?
Choosing frames made from bio-acetate, recycled nylon, or certified sustainable materials isn’t a compromise. The quality, durability, and aesthetics are every bit as good as conventional materials — in many cases better. And the choice matters.
When you pick up a pair of Bird frames, or a Ray-Ban from the bio-based collection, or a Silhouette made with SPX® Green+, you’re participating in a supply chain that has been deliberately redesigned to do less damage. The factories are powered by the sun. The materials come from plants and recycled waste rather than oil wells. The offcuts are recycled back into the next pair.
That’s not a marginal improvement. It’s a fundamental rethinking of how something as everyday as a pair of glasses gets made.
At Coleman Opticians, we believe the best frames are the ones you love wearing — and we think knowing they were made well, with genuine care for the world around us, makes them that little bit better.
How we are helping!
At Coleman Opticians, sustainability isn’t just something we admire in the brands we stock. It’s something we practise every day.
We offer contact lens recycling, battery recycling, and we take in old glasses frames and send them to communities in the developing world who need them most.
Every pair you drop off, every battery you bring in, makes a real difference.
The eyewear industry is changing for the better, and we’re proud to be part of that change, from the frames on our shelves to the values we hold as a business.
Pop in and ask us about any of our sustainability initiatives, or explore the Bird and Silhouette collections in store today.
