From Scraps to Sunnies: You’ll Never Guess What These 3D-Printed Glasses are Made of

Did you ever think you’d wear your trash as accessories?

w.r.yuma is the definition of a future-focused company. Named after the sunniest place on earth, w.r.yuma pride themselves on being the first company to come up with a way to turn recycled plastic into high-quality sunglasses. With a self-confessed run of more than 1000 printed trial-sunglasses (all for reuse afterwards, of course), w.r.yuma finally perfected the method for 3D-printing sunglasses.

The company is working with Better Future Factory (BFF), who is producing fully recycled plastic filaments for 3D-printers, with the same quality of the freshly produced plastic filaments. Better Future Factory has won awards for their environmentally friendly invention, Refil, which even comes in different colours.

Engineers at the factory use car dashboards for the black plastic filament, while transparent plastic filament is made from 90% old soda bottles, and even the white detail work on the sunglasses is made from recycled fridges.

Not only is 3D-printing futuristic and cool, but it is also environmentally sustainable. By only printing what you need, no excess plastic goes to waste.

At w.r.yuma, the process of stopping new plastic from being produced goes way beyond recycling. They see a future where a circular economy is the way of the world. Designers and engineers would integrate sustainability into their designs from the beginning by incorporating an easy way for products to be recycled.

With this ideology in mind, w.r.yuma does not add glue or toxic substances to their sunglasses, thereby making sure the recycling of materials is as easy as possible. They’re also planning on setting up a system where a discount would be given to people who return old pairs of w.r.yuma’s sunnies, so they can live up to their motto:

“it’s not waste until it’s wasted.”

In the future, w.r.yuma are working on incorporating new materials, such as coffee, beer, algae or recycled fishing nets into their designs. If you want to see more, check out their kickstarter campaign, where you can also pre-order your sunnies today. We’ll be looking forward to a new line of w.r.yuma sunglasses in more shapes, sizes and colours, made from even stranger (sustainable) materials.

Feature image via w.r.yuma.