A WINDOW MADE OF WASTE

Every year, billions of demo lenses end up as waste. Demo, or demonstration lenses are designed to help hold the shape of a pair of spectacles in transit and in-store before they are fitted with the customers prescription lenses. They also mimic the final look of prescription spectacles, improving the customer experience.

Unfortunately, being made from varying plastics, and covered with anti-reflective coatings, recycling these lenses can be a complicated process.

Without a well-established recycling or waste management system across the industry, it’s estimated that annually 60% of plastic demo lenses will go to landfills, 25% to incineration, 13% to recycling, and 2% to litter. With this in mind, we’ve been holding on to ours with an idea to turn them into something special.

Suspended in our window, 1,400 demo lenses form a circle. Part of our logo, this emblem represents our commitment to circularity.

This installation will hang far beyond the holidays without contributing to the 12500 tonnes of Christmas decorations that get discarded each year.

To bring this vision to life, we teamed up with The Illusionist, a York based kinetic mobile designer. James meticulously drilled, threaded and arranged 1400 of our demo lenses. With a cardboard cutout as a guide, he then staggered the rows to create a fuller more dynamic effect.

The result is this delicate installation, demo lenses and a few prescription lenses refracting light and colour into our Chiltern Street window.

If you're passing by our Chiltern Street store, stop by and have a look.