Photo credit: Shwood
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If you’re trying to avoid plastic and like sustainable fashion, then you’ve probably been taking a closer look at what your sunglasses are made of. And if they’re high quality, you might see the word “acetate.”
Acetate is used by eyewear companies because it’s a high-quality, beautifully glossy and transparent material with just the right amount of bend. You can even bring a pair of acetate frames to your local optician and they will gently bend them to fit your face better. You can’t do that with plastic.
You’ll find acetate in many conscious sunglasses brands – even ones that started out with other sustainable materials have incorporated acetate into their offerings. There’s cotton-based acetate in Proof eyewear, while Solo, Shwood, and Sticks & Sparrow have acetate/wood/bamboo combos. Dick Moby has recycled or bio-based acetate glasses. Modo says their Eco line is made from 63% renewable non-food oil, which is vague, but it might be acetate as well.
In fact, a lot of “sustainable” sunglass companies spend a lot of time crowing about their bamboo and then gloss right over the acetate part. Nothing to see here! Look over there! Trees! A charity program!
So, what is this mysterious acetate? How is it made? And will it biodegrade if it falls off your head into the ocean while you’re sailing? I myself had actually been confused about these questions for years, but I dug in to finally get some answers. What I found shocked me.
There is some major greenwashing in the acetate sunglasses business.
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What Is Acetate and How Is It Made?
So what is acetate? It’s a cellulosic material, which makes it a close cousin to rayon viscose (which I’ve also done an explainer on – you should consider reading it if you haven’t yet and then come back to this). That means that it’s a semi-synthetic material. The base material is from plants (mostly tree pulp). It is processed in an industrial facility using a cocktail of acids to form a powder and then a melted goo that is either stretched into threads for fabric, formed into those squishy little filters that are found in cigarette butts, or molded into a plastic-like substance that can be formed into glasses frames.
Dress lining, sunglasses, and cigarette butts: That is where you'll find acetate.
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Is acetate manufacturing polluting? Well, there’s even less information available about the toxicity of manufacturing acetate than there is for viscose, which is not a lot.
But there is this: all three ingredients– acetic acid, acetic anhydride, and sulfuric acid – needed for this process are highly corrosive and dangerous substances that can cause serious health problems if they come into contact with skin, are ingested, or are inhaled. Plus, some manufacturers add plasticizers, which can include the dreaded toxic phthalates.
It stands to reason if the acetate is made in a poorly regulated facility (say, in Asia) then the workers exposed to these fumes will suffer long-term health effects, and the waste, if dumped without purification, is toxic to marine life and the environment in general. But we just don’t know for sure, because to my knowledge, no watchdog group has picked up on this issue yet and done any sort of report.
If the acetate is expressly bio-acetate (plasticizer-free) and manufactured in a regulated environment (for example, Italy, under the European Union’s strict REACH chemical guidelines), then you can be fairly confident that the workers wear protective clothing, and there are proper ventilation systems and waste treatment set up.
The best manufacturer in this regard seems to be Mazzucchelli, in Italy. They also own acetate factories in China, and I want to assume that they manage those factories equally well. Check out the acetate manufacturing video they made:
I dug around websites and emailed all the sunglasses companies that market themselves as sustainable but don’t say anything about their acetate sourcing. One sustainable sunglasses company told me that their acetate is manufactured in the U.S., which would be great, except I couldn’t find any evidence of a U.S. acetate manufacturer, and then they said it’s assembled in China, and asked me not to tell you that. (That is shady AF! Definitely not promoting them to you.) Proof Eyewear sent me their code of conduct and said that they visit their Chinese frames manufacturer, but that their acetate is sourced from a variety of Chinese manufacturers. Sticks and Sparrow, Modo, and Solo all didn’t answer my emailed questions by press time.
When I emailed Pala, a sunglasses company that has a give-back program that funds eye care projects in Africa and sends you your glasses in a handmade pouch made from recycled plastic, they told me that their glasses are cut and molded in a SMETA-audited factory in China, with acetate from this factory. I have to give them props for being transparent with me. Even better, starting next month they will offer a style made from pre-consumer recycled acetate sourced from a Mazzucchelli-owned factory in China. In 2019, they will offer bio-acetate styles as well, mostly likely from Mazzucchelli’s Italian factory. [Update: the collection is now available!]
Dick Moby does the very best job in this respect, with a video of the whole process in the Italian factory of Mazzucchelli from cellulose powder to final product. (Watch the whole video; the final line made me LOL.) Some of their black acetate is even pre-consumer recycled acetate from the cutting floor of the factory. Article One, Shwood, and Finlay & Co. all share on their website that their acetate factory is Mazzucchelli as well.
So here’s a roundup of my favorite acetate pairs from the above honest sunglasses brands:
Schwood
Dick Moby
Lowercase
Article One
Finlay & Co.
Will Acetate Biodegrade?
There’s also not a lot of information out there on this topic either.
This article is incredibly dense, but seems to be the best scientific review available. I’ll save you the headache and summarize. It says that acetate films and fibers (very thin and tiny pieces of acetate) will biodegrade eventually, though how long it takes them to biodegrade depends on where they are discarded: in the soil, in water, in an anaerobic environment (a landfill), in sunshine, amongst the right microbes or not. Oh, and adding plasticizers can help it biodegrade faster. There’s that environmental trade-off issue again.
A cigarette butt filter made of acetate can apparently take anywhere from 18 months to 10 years to biodegrade. This report says that acetate will biodegrade, but too slowly to be officially certified as “biodegradable.”
In conclusion, it’s safe to say that if you chuck your acetate sunglasses in the ocean, they will eventually completely biodegrade (and if they have a phthalate plasticizer, release that toxin into the ocean). Bio-acetate could be better than plastic, which can take hundreds of years to biodegrade. But in the meantime, the acetate bits absolutely can get eaten or choked on by a marine mammal. So they’re not a perfect solution. Just a less-bad one.
Can You Recycle Acetate Sunglasses?
Technically, recycling acetate is possible.
You can’t put sunglasses in the plastics recycling unless they are actually plastic. This company says you can recycle your acetate glasses frames right with your paper, because they’re both made from wood pulp. But even if that is true (and I highly doubt it) I guarantee a municipal waste employee will toss them in the trash at some point along the chain. So don’t put your sunglasses in with the newspaper.
When I was in Brussels at the Paradise City festival, a small local nonprofit showed me a block of acetate that had been created from recycling old cigarette butts – it looked a lot like the material in tortoiseshell glasses, actually. If you for some reason have a lot of old broken acetate frames to dispose of (maybe you’re a sunglasses company that wants to do a take-back program?) I would contact Terracycle and ask if they could add them to their cigarette butt recycling stream. Hopefully, someday there will be recycling or a take-back system in place.
Otherwise, the best thing to do with your old acetate glasses frames is to donate them.
(All glasses have lenses that are made from virgin plastic. You can chuck the lenses in the plastic recycling when the sunglasses break.)
Can Acetate Be Sustainable and Ethical?
In short: yes. Acetate sunglass frames can be sustainable and ethical if they come from a vetted source, and they are a better choice than virgin plastic. Here’s what to look for:
- The plant material for the acetate is sustainably obtained, either from recycled material, agricultural waste, or sustainably managed forests. (In a perfect world. Most sunglasses companies don’t go this far. Mazzucchelli sources from a combo of cotton and wood pulp. Ideally at some point Canopy, which has a rainforest-free certification program for rayon viscose, would certify acetate as well!)
- No plasticizer is added to the acetate, or it’s “bio-based” acetate.
- The acetate is manufactured in Europe and then molded into frames under ethical working conditions, or the company has visited the acetate manufacturing facility (not just the frame manufacturer).
- The frames are high quality and will last a long time, either for your own use or so that you can donate them and they can be reused.
- Bonus: The sunglasses come in sustainable packaging that is recycled/recyclable.
- Bonus: There’s a giveback element when you buy a pair.
Should You Just Get Sunglasses Made From Other Materials?
Is your head swimming yet? Maybe you would like to forget acetate altogether and opt for other options, such as wood, bamboo, metal, and recycled plastic. And there are plenty of options!
Recycled Plastic
Sunglasses made from recycled marine plastic, like those from Sea2See, Sunski, and Good Citizens are a better choice than virgin plastic, of course. If they fall off into the water, you can comfort yourself that the plastic from them was plucked from the ocean, so the net effect on the amount of marine plastic is zero.
Good Citizens
Good Citizens is a great option for recycled plastic sunglasses. Based in Australia, each pair of Good Citizens sunglasses is made out of a 600ml single-use plastic bottle. That’s 100% recycled PET, even the hinge. Plus, for every pair you buy, they will take 1kg of plastic waste out of the ocean. Even better: they’re fixable. Each and every part can be replaced, and they will recycle any part(s) you send back to them. For packaging, they use carbon neutral shipping, 100% recycled cardboard, and even the case fabric is 100% recycled from bottles.
The glasses are made in Sydney for radical transparency, meaning no one (nor the planet) is harmed.
SeaClean from GlassesUSA
GlassesUSA.com has long provided conventional eye and sunglasses and is now wading into the waters of sustainability by introducing their first recycled collection: SeaClean. These sunnies (which are also available in regular eye glasses) are made from 100% recycled plastic bottles and for every pair purchased, they donate $5 to the Ocean Cleanup Foundation to help them reach their goal of creating a plastic-free ocean by 2050.
Sunski
Wood and Bamboo Sunglasses
I’ve been seduced by the siren call of completely wooden and bamboo sunglasses several times, and I can report that the completely wooden ones break too easily. They’ve broken on me, with the weak point being the bridge or lens frame, and they’ve broken on my friends. So I don’t recommend them.
But the bamboo ones by Topheads were way less brittle, and served me really well for a long time, until the lenses were too scratched for me to wear anymore (which is my fault for not taking care of them). I absolutely recommend them.
Topheads
Swell Vision has some bamboo and metal ones that look like they would hold up a little better than the completely wooden ones. Shwood says their wood comes from “authorized and supervised plantations across the globe,” and Proof Eyewear says theirs is sustainably harvested wood.
The acetate fronts with wooden sides I don’t think are as stylish, and it seems sort of silly to hold them up as more sustainable than completely acetate sunglasses – sort of like plastic water bottles that use 30% less plastic – especially if the acetate is not verified. So I’m just not including them here.
Metal Sunglasses
You could also buy metal sunglasses, which I think are a more sustainable and long-lasting choice. (My great uncle has a pair of metal Ray-bans from WWII. They don’t look great, but he’s still wearing them!) The aluminum ones are completely and easily recyclable, while the titanium ones are technically recyclable, but can’t go in your metals bin, unfortunately.
But maybe get yourself some sunglasses chains, too, so you don’t lose them. I’m not going to research sustainable chains, because I am utterly researched-out today. Someone pass me a margarita.
The post Acetate Sunglasses: Eco-Friendly or Just Greenwashing? [Plus the brands to trust for 2020!] appeared first on Ecocult.
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