WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR RECYCLED SPECS

Colwyn Bay and District Lions Club is grateful to all who recycle their used specs and to those opticians who collect on our behalf. But have you ever wondered what happens to your glasses when you deposit them in the collection box? What to the Lions do with them, where do they go and where do they end up? Well, to those who are curious 

Collecting spectacles for recycling has been a major project for Lions Clubs for well over 40 years.

Colwyn Bay Lions have been collecting for 20 years. Our spectacles are presently forwarded to Chichester Lions who act as a collection centre for all UK Lions Clubs. They receive used spectacles from Lions clubs throughout the UK, as well as from opticians and supermarket sources. A special THANK YOU to PARCEL FORCE for transporting so many specs from all parts of the country FREE OF CHARGE and to FRASER FREIGHT of Portsmouth for transporting sorted spectacles FREE OF CHARGE to Medico France in Le Havres.

Spectacles are delivered in boxes and bags of all shapes and sizes and are processed by Chichester Lion Club members and other volunteers in their workshop. Considerable experience is used to select the items that are suitable for recycling and to sort them in preparation for onward transmission to the Le Havre Lions and Medico France in Le Havre.

In 1988, another outlet was established through Vision Aid Overseas, and in 1990 Boots the Chemist and Help The Aged joined us in a national campaign which produced 460,000 pairs of specs in six months. Once sorted they went to places such as Cameroon, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Sri Lanka, India, Zanzibar, Jamaica, Bolivia and Brazil.

We have recently developed, with the help of the Inside Out Trust, facilities for grading spectacles in the UK and have shipped directly to Ghana, Papua New Guinea, Nepal and recently to Nigeria. In each case, the glasses are sent directly to known or Lions club contacts. We have also developed contacts with individuals and charities based in the UK who are carrying out eye-camp projects overseas, who are able to use spectacles that we are recycling and supplying to them. Last year Lions Clubs sent over 300,000 pairs of spectacles to Medico France. Through Chichester the UK lions clubs provide more than 50% of the spectacles processed by Medico France - more than any other national group including France itself

Recycling of scrap material from broken and unsuitable spectacles yields funds which support the sorting operation and enable us to give financial support to eye related projects in the UK and overseas.  Since the inception of our Sight project we have donated approaching £150,000 to sight related schemes. Chichester Lions are very grateful to the Apuldram Centre who have made land available for our workshop, the many Lions clubs who collect spectacles and send them to us, the shops, surgeries and organisations who provide facilities for collection bins, Parcelforce, without whose help the scheme could not function - and also to the members of the Chichester club who have committed their time.