Have you old or unused spectacles you no longer need? Belfast Lions Club has teamed up with Belfast City Council and Extern as well as ArtsEkta, a social enterprise based in Belfast, to recycle the glasses. They are now being collected in specially provided blue bins at the Council’s four main recycling deports covering North, South, East and West Belfast, at Alexandra Park Avenue, Ormeau, Palmerstown Road and Blackstaff Way.

Belfast City Council Magazine: City Matters

 The latest edition of the Council’s City Matters magazine contains details of the location of the depots and the opening hours. Perhaps you know an optician who would like to collect the spectacles and organise the scheme locally, so that the glasses (without the cases) can be passed on to the Council for disposal in the blue bins provided. The charity Extern will collect the spectacles and put them into boxes. They will then be sent to a central depot in England run by Chichester Lions Club. From there, they will be sent for reuse in countries in Africa and in India.

Belfast Lions Club: Recycle your Spectacles

RECYCLE YOUR SPECS

You can now recycle your old glasses at any of our (Belfast City Council) recycling centres.

We’ve teamed up with Belfast Lions Club, local charity Extern and a Belfast-based social enterprise ArtsEkta to send unwanted spectacles to developing countries. The glasses are collected from our recycling centres and sorted into various categories. They are then distributed to eye camps in India, Africa and Eastern Europe, where they are matched to the right patient. The (Chichester) Lions Clubs have run this scheme for over thirty years and last year they sent over 300,000 pairs of spectacles for reuse at eye camps.    

i: For more information on this and other projects or to get involved with Belfast Lions Club, please call Michael Fisher on 9066 2945.

Belfast City Council Recycling Centres

These schemes operate through Lions Clubs in many parts of the UK and Ireland. When I passed through the town in March I noticed that Southend-on-Sea Lions Club had linked up with the local Council to provide a box at its headquarters where unused spectacles could be recycled. Perhaps we will be able to arrange something similar with the City fathers in Belfast. 

Southend-on-Sea Lions Club Recycling Scheme