Planet care through optics
Sustainability
No doubt that its time to change our mindset. The nature has its limits and we need to take action whether we are clima activists or not. We shall be the first to admit that its not top of our mindset on a every day basis and - honestly - if we should be truely dedicated to the clima change the nature is better off not having yet another eyewear maker.
This being said, we hope we have a positive impact after all. Because there is many ways of doing sutainable eyewear. Our mission is to make long-lasting products in high quality, which will follow you many years to come, in a price range everyone can affort. We pay attention to new sustainable materials suitable for eyewear production. We have recycled cases, giftboxes made in FSC certified paper without no use of ink. We use as little recycled plastic as possible (some lenses need protection though) but in the majority of our collections no plastic is used in packaging at all.
Its just important that we are clever enough as consumers to look through products with a sustainable marketing aspect only (green washing) and take a closer look at sincere sutainable market players, who actually are in the game to make a small change.
We believe that the world does not need more eyewear, but better eyewear ☝🏻
Forest care
As designers we love working with organic materials. Seeing different structures from the same raw material to the other is a gift from our point of view. We are also aware of that it isn't an inexhaustible ressource and thats why we choose to give back begining with a local project.
https://plant-et-trae.dk/
More to come in our coming collection from HÄNG.
Organic materials
Although we are more than satisfied with tree as a raw material its not the only option in sustainable eyewear production. Many people properly don´t know but the majority of glasses from your local optician are based on plants. The material is called celluose acetate and is derived from cotton plant fibers. Acetic anhydride and plasticizers are then added to improve its physical characteristics and workability to become one of the most important raw materials for the production of glasses. When you think about plastic and acetic you immediately think of something negative and its justified. Celluose acetate is a great product in so many ways but sustainable? Not really. There is an option though. One of the world leading acetate manufactures has come up with a material composed of cellulose acetate and a plasticizer of 100% vegetable origin. The result is a raw material with remarkable bio-based content mostly composed of ingridients from renewable sources.
More to come in our coming collection from HÄNG.
Ocean karma
Being active on water is one of our favourite activities and as official sponsor of the danish national sailing team there is nothing we would love more than support making oceans free from plastics. Why we are being reluctant using recycled plastics from ocenas is due to the mistrust and given composition of the final product and the process of making the plastics re-useable for eyewear production. When looking into the specifications of most eyewear made of "recycled ocean platics" it consist of only 35-40% recycled plastics (Its properly not even from the oceans!). The rest is chemistry and the quality is still on level with the bottle from the supermaket - great story, shitty quality. Be critical as consumer and don't be attracted of sustainable marketing stunts. We are looking into better options and when we find the perfect match we will be the first to act.
Meanwhile, we rather support clean-up ocean efforts (not recycled ocean plastics efforts since we have some facts showing the differculties of recycling oceans plastics do to the degrading by sea salt and UV light making it unuasble for recycling). Hence, we prefer concurrently to interact with project collecting plastics before it reaches the oceans. So, as the article reffered to below mentions, the more fitting term would be "ocean-bound" plastic.
Four need-to-knows about ‘ocean plastic’ recycling - Prevented Ocean Plastic