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The Ecological Footprint of Disposable Conacts

Shannon Keeney
ENVL 4300: Environmental Issues
March 13, 2016

Abstract:
Soft contact lenses were created in 1959 but it was not until 2000 that soft contact lenses were
made of silicone hydrogel and were used widely in the United States. Silicone hydrogel lenses
are composed of silicone and a crosslinked polymeric system containing water at its equilibrium
state. These lenses are made in one of two ways: lathe cutting or injection molding. Injection
molding is the most common way for making disposable contacts. The manufacturing process
produces 0.29 pounds of carbon dioxide for every pair of soft lens. The consumers footprint is
based off of the waste they produce from the actual contact, the packaging, carrying cases for
each individual contact, and the cleaning solution bottle. As a biweekly contact wearer, I produce
about 0.65 g of dehydrated contact lenses every year and a total of 2.5 to 3 pounds of waste
every year from my contacts and contact products. This is a relatively small impact compared to
my overall ecological footprint.

Table of Contents
Introduction ...4
The History of Contact Lenses .4-6
The Materials in Soft Contact Lenses 6
The Manufacturing of Silicone Hydrogel Lenses ...7-8
The End Consumers Direct Environmental Impact .8-9
Conclusion .9
Works Cited .10
Appendix ..11

Introduction:
The contact lens is an invention that is worn to correct eye vision, it can also be worn for
cosmetic reasons, like changing someones eye color. The lens sits on top of a film of tears that
are directly over the cornea. Soft contact lenses provide the wearer with more comfort than hard
lenses but they tear easier than hard lenses. (Advameg Inc., 2016)
Unfortunately, my vision started to go when I was only eleven years old, but I only
required glasses when I was not close enough to the board at school. As the years went by my
vision got progressively worse to the point when I did not feel comfortable with how poor my
vision was. I did not like the idea of wearing glasses day in and day out because I felt as though
my vision was restricted to a box. When I fourteen years old I started wearing soft contact lenses.
With contacts I am able to see clearly all day and I do not realize, most of the time, I am wearing
a device that corrects my vision, unlike glasses. After wearing these for six year I was completely
unaware of what they were made of, how they were made, and what my ecological footprint is
for wearing them.

The History of Contact Lenses:

Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to suggest optics of the eye could be altered by
placing the cornea in direct contact with water through his sketches. It wasnt until more than
350 years later that the idea was proposed. Sir John Herschel proposed the idea of making a mold
of a persons eye to correct their vision in 1927. The first contact lens was created by one of two
men, F.A. Muller or Adolf Fick, it is unknown which one was the person who truly created it
first. Some claim that in 1887 Muller used Herschels ideas and created the first known glass
contact lens, others say that it was Adolf Fick who created and fitted the first class contact lens to

correct vision in 1888. Ficks lens was made of glass and covered the sclera (See Appendix
Figure 1), known as the scleral lens. Since the contact lens covered much of the eye and was
made of glass, it greatly reduced the oxygen supply to the cornea. People were only able to wear
the lens for a few hours. (Heiting, 2015)
In 1912, a glass contact lens that only covered the cornea was developed. In 1936,
William Feinbloom created a scleral lens that combined glass and plastic, it was significantly
lighter than the glass lenses. (Heiting, 2015) Glass contacts were hard to wear because they were
so heavy but in 1938 two scientists created a lens made of Plexiglas. Kevin Tuohy introduced the
first lens that resembled modern gas permeability lenses in 1948. The lenses were all plastic and
were much smaller in diameter, only covering the cornea of the eye. These plastic lenses were
made of polymethyl methacrylate, a non-porous plastic material, but they were fitted so they
would move with each blink, this allowed oxygen-carrying tears to get under the lens and allow
oxygen to get to the cornea. The polymethyl lenses could be worn for over sixteen hours.
(Heiting, 2015) These early contacts required an impression to be made on the wearers eyes for
the lenses to fit.
Around the 1950s, a keratometer was developed by a company, Bausch & Lomb, which
ended the need for the impressions. In 1959 Czech chemists, Otto Wichterle and Drahoslav Lim
created the first hydrophilic hydrogel soft contact lenses. (Heiting, 2015) The scientific
community was not accepting of soft lenses but Otto Wichterle gained their acceptance when he
produced 5,500 pairs in his kitchen. (Advameg Inc., 2016) Witchterle and Lims work led to
Bausch & Lomb selling their FDA-approved soft contact lenses known as SofLens and sold
about 100,000 pairs in 1971. (Advameg Inc., 2016)

In the United States, silicone hydrogel contact lenses were introduced in 1999 and
marketed in 2000. In 2010 in the U.S., custom-manufactured silicone hydrogel lenses were
introduced. Today, more than 90 percent of contact lenses prescribed in the U.S. are silicone
hydrogel soft lenses. (Heiting, 2015)

The Materials in Soft Contact Lenses:

Soft contact lenses are made of silicone and hydrogel. They were made to allow higher
oxygen permeability and hydrophilic qualities. Silicone has higher oxygen permeability than
water and hydrophilic polymers are called hydrogels. (CooperVision, 2016) The principle
material in silicone is silicon, it has alternating atoms of silicon and oxygen and it is attached to
other organic groups. Methanol and hydrochloric acid are combined to make methyl chloride,
which is then combined with silicon metal and other organic groups, this then goes through a
reaction refinement. After that methylsilane, phenylsilane, vinylsilane, and fluoroalkylsilane are
created and then go through hydrolysis polymerization, finally forming silicone fluids, rubbers,
liquid rubbers, and resins. (Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., 2016) (See Appendix Figure 2) Silicone
rubber is used in soft contact lenses. Hydrogels are a crosslinked polymeric system containing
water at its equilibrium state. Silicone hydrogel contacts are prepared by polymerizing a mixture
containing at least one silicone containing monomer and hydrophilic monomer. This mixture is
combined with an organic diluent then the mixture is charged to a mold to get a shaped article.
The organic diluent is removed and then the shaped article is made into a contact lens. (Nandu et
al, 1993)

The Manufacturing of Silicone Hydrogel Lenses:

Silicone hydrogel contacts are made in one of two ways: lathe cutting or injection
molding. In lathe cutting the non-hydrated disks of the lens material are mounted on a spinning
shaft. The contacts are shaped with a computer-controlled precision cutting tool, this is done to
shape both surfaces of the contacts. After it is shaped, the lens is removed and then hydrated to
soften it. This process takes a few minutes to produce the final product. (Heiting, 2015)
The injection molding process is used more often with disposable contacts because the
method is fast and less expensive. The soft contact lens material is heated to a molten state and is
then injected under pressure into molds that were designed by computers. (Heiting, 2015) The
lenses are cooled and removed from the molds, the edges of the lenses are then polished. The
lens does not have to go on a lathe if is uses the computer-controlled mold production. (Advameg
Inc., 2016) The soft contacts are hydrated to soften them.
Every contact lens is created to fit exactly on the patients eye. To do this the lens is
mounted on an arbor and it goes in a lathe or grinding machine to finalize the lens. The shape of
the lens nearest and next-nearest edges are cut with a razor blade or ground with emery paper.
Also the diameter of the lens is trimmed at this time. The lenses are them examined under
magnification for any abnormalities through shadow graphs. Any abnormalities of the lens will
show up in the shadow. (Advameg Inc., 2016)
After the lens passes inspection, it is sterilized in a boiled mixture of water and salt for
serval hours. The lenses are then packaged in glass or plastic vials, filled with saline solution and
closed with rubber or metal, at this time the contact is ready to wear. (Advameg Inc., 2016) My
contact lenses are packaged in a plastic container with a plastic seal over the top of it.

The ecological footprint of the manufacturing process includes carbon dioxide produced
during the process and waste produced for every contact made. Bausch & Lomb produces 0.29
pounds of carbon dioxide for every pair of soft contacts made. (Rastogi, 2016) For a biweekly
disposable contact user about 7.54 pounds of carbon dioxide is produced for my contacts every
year. The average North American produces 20 tons of carbon dioxide every year. (Walser, 2013)
This means that the manufacturing of my contacts accounts for 0.019% of the CO2 I produce
every year. The manufacturers also produce waste from the contact and the molding of contact
packaging. This can be reduced by recycling and reusing the waste the manufacturer can.

The End Consumers Direct Environmental Impact:

The environmental impact of the end consumer is based off of the waste generated from
their contacts post-manufacturing process and distribution. The consumer produces waste from
the actual contact, the packaging, carrying cases for each individual contact, and the cleaning
solution bottle. The environmental impact for the liquid solution used was not included in the
impact because it is a liquid and is immediately biodegradable and the impact would be so little.
The non-liquid items that contribute to an environmental impact are plastic, metal, and paper.
Daily disposable contacts and planned monthly replacement impacts were evaluated. It was
found that planned replacements had a lower environmental impact than daily disposables. The
planned replacements used less plastic and metal than the daily disposables but the daily
disposables used less paper. The annual impact of planned monthly replacement contacts is
equivalent to the impact from the disposal of fifteen 330 mL cans of Coca-Cola. The average
waste produced by a planned replacement wearer accounts for 0.5% of the total environmental
impact of a contact lens wearer. (Morgan et al., 2003).

I change my contacts every other week, so I would produce more waste than a planned
monthly replacement but less than a daily disposable wearer. One pair of dehydrated contacts is
25mg of plastic, so a biweekly contact wearer would produce 0.65 g of dehydrated plastic every
year. (Rastogi, 2016) A year supply of daily disposable wearer would produce three pounds of
plastic, metal, and paper waste. While a planned monthly replacement wearer would produce 2.5
pound of plastic, metal, and paper waste. Since I change my contacts every two weeks I would
fall somewhere in between these two, so the waste I produce yearly from wearing contacts is
between 2.5 and 3 pounds. (Morgan et al. 2003)

Conclusion:
Silicone hydrogel contact lens technology is relatively new but scientists are still working
to perfect the contact technology. Currently, scientists are researching a silicone-oxygen
compound, siloxane, as the new material for soft contact lenses. Siloxane admits oxygen to the
eye 25 times better than silicone hydrogel lenses but it does not wet as easily and it attracts lipids
to the surface. (Advameg Inc., 2016) If you ask me, the current technology is comfortable
enough and it very rarely causes discomfort.
I was expecting my impact to be much greater than a person who does not wear
disposable contacts but as it turns out I was wrong. The ecological footprint of a disposable
contact wearer is relatively small compared to all other waste that is produced in their daily life. I
only contribute 7.54 pounds of carbon dioxide and produce 2.5 to 3 pounds of waste a year, this
amount is very small to the total average CO2 and waste produced by the average American. I
will continue wearing disposable contacts without feeling guilty and will find somewhere else to
cut back my ecological footprint on the planet.

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Works Cited
Advameg Inc. (2016). Contact Lens. Retrieved from http://www.madehow.com/Volume2/Contact-Lens.html
CooperVision. (2016). Silicone Hydrogels: Whats The Difference?. Retrieved from
http://coopervision.com/about-contacts/silicone-hydrogel-contact-lenses
Heiting, G. (2015). How Contact Lenses Are Made. Retrieved from
http://www.allaboutvision.com/contacts/faq/how-cls-made.htm
Heiting, G. (2015). When Were Contact Lenses Invented?. Retrieved from
http://www.allaboutvision.com/contacts/faq/when-invented.htm
Morgan, S., Morgan, P., Efron, N. (2003). Environmental impact of three replacement modalities
of soft contact lens wear. Contact Lens & Anterior Eye. 26: 43-46.
Nandu, M., Bawa, R., Lai, Y. (1993). Process for Making Silicone Containing Hydrogel Lenses.
Bausch & Lomb Incorporated.
Rastogi, N. (2016). Glasses vs. Contact Lenses. Retrieved from
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2010/01/glasses_vs_contact
_lenses.html
Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., (2016). What is Silicone?. Retrieved from http://www.shinetsusiliconeglobal.com/info/begin2.shtml
Walser, M. (2013). Carbon footprint. Retrieved from
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/150926/

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Appendix

Figure 1: A diagram the sclera lens. (Jason Jedlicka:

http://www.allaboutvision.com/contacts/scleral-lenses.htm)

Figure 2: A chart of how silicone is made. (Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., 2016)