Recycling

Prevention of waste and legislation designed to reduce waste are factors that operate upstream of recycling.

Manufacturers’ responsibility and commitment to reducing environmental impact (which waste disposal inevitably causes) are vital in this context. The adoption of recycling systems is also an economic decision, in that it means lowering the financial cost of a product, but above all it’s a commitment and a concrete effort to mitigate the problems of environmental impact.
Recycling waste is a far more complex process than disposal and though it cannot wholly replace it, it can certainly limit its use, which is an important contribution towards safeguarding the environment.

In Luxottica, the first initiative for recycling plastic in the manufacturing process was in May 2008, and came from Oakley. It was immediately decided to apply it to the REVO line (models 4037-4038-4039-4040-4041), where production uses recycled shiny black material. The shape of this sports line lends itself to the molding of recycled plastic.

In July 2008, manufacturing tests were run to validate the formula of the recycled material and in November the tooling for the five models was completed. The first actual production of injection molded models was in January 2009.
In Luxottica, the standard production cycle (injection molding) uses granules of virgin plastic.
The granules are dehumidified in special machines and loaded into the press for injection molding.

In the case of the five REVO models, this is where the recovery and transformation of plastic for recycling starts. In the molding phase, the semi-finished parts are separated from the waste, which instead of being disposed of as in normal production is collected in big bags and supplied to a contractor.
Plastics are usually made up of polymers (chains of smaller molecules called monomers) and soften with heat, a property that enables plastic to be remolded into a new shape.

The contractor regrinds the waste in a “mill”, forms a paste and extrudes it into long thin “spaghetti” which are cut up into granules.
These granules are then put in sacks and delivered to Luxottica, where a new molding process begins.
Production of these recycled models involves three production plants working in synergy: Agordo, Pederobba and Foot Hill Ranch.