Helensburgh Lions Club have been collecting spectacles for recycling for over 25 years, it has been estimated that over that time some 40,000 spectacle have been donated.
Our collection boxes are located in local opticians –
Specsavers, Helensburgh Eyecare, 20/20 Opticians and Boots Eyecare.
The Lions recycling story
Chichester Lions Club began collecting old glasses for recycling back in 1967. The initiative really took off in 1980 with a delivery of 700 sorted specs to the Missionary Optical Society (MOS) in Devon for use in their clinics in Kenya and India.
Gradually other Lions Clubs started feeding their recycled spectacles through Chichester. So in 1985, a link was established with Le Havre Lions and Medico France. Over the following five years some 100,000 specs, 43,000 lenses, and 10,000 frames were sent to Medico France while still delivering to MOS in Devon as many pairs of sorted specs as needed.
In 1988, another outlet was established through Vision Aid Overseas, and in 1990, a national campaign with Boots the Chemist and Help The Aged 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.
Although the scale of this campaign stretched the Chichester operation to its limits, Lions clubs continue to collect hundreds of thousands of spectacles each year. They work with local shops, surgeries, and other organisations that kindly host collection bins on their premises.
Spectacle donations arrive in Chichester in boxes and bags of all shapes and sizes. They are expertly sorted by Lions members and volunteers. Those sent onto Medico France are then cleaned and graded for use in eye camps in Africa, India, and Eastern Europe.
Through contacts with individuals and charities based in the UK, Chichester Lions make spectacles available for eye-camp projects overseas. Support is also provided for volunteers traveling on Unite For Sight projects who re-use spectacles for their individual projects.
Every year over 300,000 pairs of spectacles are sent to Medico France. Indeed, donations by UK Lions Clubs, recycled through Chichester, account for more than half of the total number of spectacles processed by Medico France.