Sustainable sunglasses brand W.R. Yuma has teamed up with a bunch of kids from Antwerp to “co-create the world’s first sunglasses from river plastic”.

The startup, which makes sunglasses from old fridges, car dashboards and PET bottles using 3D printing technology, were keen to collaborate with kids playgroup Stormkop – an experimental playground for children located in an old shipyard near Antwerp – who go out a few times per week to collect waste on the nearby river banks.

Using the river plastic collected by the kids, W.R. Yuma started experimenting to see if they could turn it into new 3D printing ink. The plastic was cleaned, shredded in small pieces and melted into 3D printing filament (ink). With this filament, W.R. Yuma 3D printed a limited collection of kids sunglasses with 50% river plastic that they could assemble themselves and take home with them.

Lot Saldien, co-ordinator at Stormkop, said: “We want to engage kids with creative and hands-on solutions for our common waste problem.

“A few times per week the kids go out and collect the waste on the river banks nearby. There is a huge amount of plastic waste in the river so it’s an ongoing challenge to find creative ways to do something useful with it.”

The collection of kids sunglasses from river plastic was a one-off experiment.

W.R. Yuma

Rosa Medea is Life & Soul Magazine’s Chief. She writes about lifestyle including sustainable and green living. She also offers content services to businesses and individuals at Rosamedea.com