Bayfields' Sustainability Champions

10 November
Looking after the environment and trying to reduce our impact on it are increasingly important topics to many of us. At Bayfields, we're doing our bit by helping clients recycle frames, lenses and contact lenses, introducing sustainable brands, making our bags from recyclable material and making our lens spray bottles from PETE which is also 100% recyclable.
Our Sustainability Group
The Bayfields Sustainability Group is comprised of people from all corners of the business. Our focus is to not only deliver the best solutions to all our clients, but to reduce our environmental impact where we can and implement greener solutions. The team meets on a monthly basis to discuss any ideas or suggestions on how we can improve by looking at all aspects of the business, from manufacturing to practices.
What have we done?
In all 43 practices, we have recycling bins for contact lenses, hearing aids, and glasses. We work with teracycle, who are an innovative recycling company. Clients are encouraged to bring in their old contact lenses, blister packs, and the foil on the blister pack. This ensures all materials are properly recycled.

We also proudly work with the Lion’s Club charity, who take old glasses and hearing aids, and they donate them directly to eye clinics in Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Nigeria, and Nepal. In our central support building we have recycling bins and we have made small changes to make big differences.

All of our practices offer sustainable eyewear brands, such as sea2see and the ECO Conscious range from Eyespace. Sea2see offer frames that are made of 100% certified recycled marine plastic. 
Maria in Egham recently attended an ECO fayre and held some important conversations about sustainability, she showed off our wonderful sustainable glasses range, whilst highlighting our different recycling schemes.

Our Bayfield's glasses bags are 100% recyclable, the bag material is uncoated paper, the handles are paper, all the inks are water based, and they can be recycled at home. We recently took part in Sustainable September and engaged in Recycling Week on the 19th of September.
Looking forward:
We are not striving for perfection, instead we want to inspire and encourage each other to make those small changes. After all, the planet doesn’t need a handful of perfect people, it needs a million imperfect people making positive changes. We know we have a long way to go, but we are excited for what more we can do. If you have any suggestions on ways we can improve, please do not hesitate to contact sustainabilityteam@bayfieldsopticians.onmicrosoft.com we would love to hear from you!


- Megan Harper, Chair of Sustainability at Bayfields Opticians & Audiologists