The National Spectacle Recycling Scheme by RecycLine

A Bit About The Scheme

Simply fill out a sign-up form on our website, and we will send you an invoice for the number of boxes you require. Boxes are charged at one off £25 per box, which includes admin costs, and the costs of postage and packing to you. There is also a £12.50 deposit included in the sign up fee, and that £12.50 is fully refundable upon return of the undamaged box.

Upon receipt of payment your boxes will be dispatched to your required locations, and all you need do is place the box somewhere on your shop floor or on a table top. We will then add your store to our spectacle recycling store locator page, where you can add a preferred landing page address for your website, detailing any special promotions you are running, or any information you want to put out, and we will insert that link into our store locator function so that customers in your region can see where you are and what you are offering.

When the box is full simply empty it into a suitable container, ensuring it is free of contaminants and send it to us at our facility in Essex, where we will weigh the contents and record it against your store or group, so that you can see the total weight that you will have helped to divert from UK landfill.

For every 100 kilos we receive we pledge to plant 1 tree with the justonetree.life foundation, where they will publish a tree count on their website. This information will also be available on our own website and your tree count will be published there also.

We are in the process of manufacturing optical store shop fittings made from 100% recycled spectacle waste, which will be available to opticians participating in the scheme in the late summer/early autumn 2022.

NB: Upon completion of the sign up form you will receive an invoice for £25 plus VAT.

NB: The costs of posting waste materials from your location to Recycline’s facility is covered by you.

A Bit About Recycline

RecycLine are a zero-waste recycling company specialising in processing difficult waste streams and have been leading the charge in the UK and Europe over the last few years, to solve the problem of handling high volumes of end-of-life spectacles sustainably.

It is estimated that without Recycline’s involvement the total volume of spectacles that would be going to landfill each year in the UK would be as high as two hundred tons, and they currently process only half of that total.

Recycling spectacles is a challenge for general recycling facilities due to the mixed materials used in the manufacturing of spectacle frames and lenses.

At RecycLine, materials used to produce spectacles are separated using bespoke technologies, with the metal being re-used, and the plastic being utilised as aggregates in manufacturing processes as a bulking agent on recyclable products, thus ensuring that materials enter the circular economy and remain there.

RecycLine recently launched their collection scheme for optical retailers with some of the biggest brands in optical industry participating. The National Spectacle Recycling Scheme will enable all opticians who wish to display spectacle recycling boxes on their shop floor so that customers can drop off their unwanted frames and be confident they will be handled sustainably.

Members of the public will also be able to visit the scheme’s Spectacle Recycling Store Locator map online to see where there nearest participating store is, further increasing the visibility for and highlighting the environmental commitment of retailers taking part in the scheme, and providing a service to the public by disposing of their old spectacles responsibly.

Chris Stafford, Managing Director at RecycLine says ‘We know that consumers and retailer have found it difficult to access a fully sustainable recycling solution for spectacles since the closure of VAOs scheme, and so we are delighted to be leading the way in providing a nationally recognisable scheme that people can trust’.

The scheme launched nationally in May 2022.