Contact lens recycling, finally solved

Waste in.
Recovery out.
Loop closed.

Every day, contact lens wearers throw away a lens, a blister pack, and a foil seal. One at a time. 14 billion times a year. LensLoop is the first Point-of-Use Recovery system built to stop that — without changing your routine.

93%
capture rate in beta
↑ Expanding now
2,360
packs already out of landfill
14B
lenses & packs thrown away yearly in the US
Join the Waitlist — Free How it works
LensLoop recovery unit sitting on a clean marble bathroom counter

The problem with contact lens recycling

14 billion contact lenses, blister packs, and foil seals thrown away every year.

Not because people don't care. Because no recycling system was ever easy enough to beat the bin. Existing drop-off programs recover less than 1% of the waste — not because of a technology gap, but because of a friction gap. Every extra step between waste creation and recovery is a point of failure.

A bathtub filled with 7,244 contact lens blister packs — the annual waste from just 10 daily wearers
What you're looking at

This isn't an AI image. It's our bathtub, after physically collecting and counting the contact lens blister packs, foil, and lenses from 10 daily wearers over one year. 7,244 units.

Each piece disappears in two seconds when you throw it away one at a time. The aggregate doesn't disappear. And because these items are too small for standard sorting equipment, almost all of it ends up buried or incinerated — even when people try to recycle.

Two reasons recycling programs keep failing.

Why size matters

Most recycling facilities reject items smaller than a credit card.

Contact lenses and blister packs fall through sorting gaps and are landfilled or incinerated — even when consumers make the effort. The problem isn't intent. It's infrastructure.

Watch the industry discussion on recycling contact lens waste →

Why location matters

Recovery has to happen where waste is created — not somewhere you drive to.

Every additional step between waste creation and recovery is a point of failure. That's why drop-off programs fail. Behavior happens in the bathroom. Recovery has to happen there too.

Contact lens blister pack beside a credit card showing scale

How it works

Order. Use. Recover. Repeat.

LensLoop is a new way to buy your contact lenses. You order your brand from us — we'll carry all major brands at launch. Recovery is built into the subscription from day one.

1

Order your lenses from LensLoop

Your first order ships with a LensLoop recovery unit. Your lenses and your recovery infrastructure arrive together. One delivery.

2

The unit lives in your bathroom

After every wear, drop the lens, blister pack, and foil straight in. No sorting. No storage. No decisions. It's there at the exact moment waste is created.

3

Track, earn, and reorder

The companion app shows your recovery rate, earns you Blister Bucks, tells you when it's time to reorder, and lets you apply Blister Bucks toward future orders.

4

We handle the rest

When your next order ships, LensLoop collects your waste. No trip. No label to print. The loop closes automatically.

LensLoop Order, Use, Recover system diagram — showing lenses, recovery unit, app, and the closed loop
Works for every lens type. Daily, bi-weekly, or monthly — LensLoop is designed for all contact lens wearers. Dailies generate more waste and use more recovery cartridges. Every wearer deserves a way to manage it.
LensLoop recovery unit on a clean marble bathroom counter — designed to sit exactly where contact lens waste is created

Why it works

Recovery infrastructure has to exist where waste is created.

Our founding team previously ran Sightly — a platform used by over 10,000 contact lens patients. We learned one thing fast: if you know when someone runs out of lenses, you know exactly when to collect their waste.

LensLoop aligns collection with delivery. The recovery unit is in the bathroom, at the moment waste is generated. No extra habit. No extra trip. Recovery becomes the default — not the exception.

"If a system is harder to use than the garbage can, the garbage can wins. Every time."

— Kelly Curry, Founder, LensLoop

Beta results

18 months. Real wearers.
Real waste. Real numbers.

Not a survey. Not a model. Every unit tracked and counted. This is what happens when recovery is built into the routine instead of bolted on as an afterthought.

Beta in progress — expanding to 20+ users
93%
per-user capture rate
LensLoop beta · 18 months
2,360
lens packs recovered & out of landfill
Lenses + blister packs + foil
20+
users in next phase
Expanding now — join below

Things people ask.

No — LensLoop doesn't make contact lenses. We're a new way to buy the lenses you already wear. At launch, you'll order your brand through LensLoop and the recovery system comes with it. Same lenses. Better loop.
Yes. LensLoop is designed for daily, bi-weekly, and monthly wearers alike. Daily wearers generate the most packaging waste — 730 blister packs per year versus 52 for bi-weekly and 24 for monthly — and will cycle through recovery cartridges faster. Our goal is for every contact lens wearer to have a LensLoop unit.
Blister packs and lenses are too small for standard municipal sorting equipment — they fall through and end up landfilled or incinerated regardless. Drop-off programs like Bausch + Lomb's ONE by ONE exist, but they require you to store, transport, and remember — which is why participation stays low. LensLoop removes all of that friction.
A full-time daily wearer generates approximately 730 lenses, 730 blister packs, and 730 foil seals per year — roughly 1 kilogram of packaging waste. Across the US, that adds up to an estimated 14 billion individual lenses discarded annually, plus all the matching packaging. When thrown away one at a time, the scale is invisible. The bathtub photo above makes it visible.
It means that during our 18-month beta, users recovered 93% of the lens packaging they generated — tracked unit by unit, not estimated by survey. That's the number we're proudest of, and the one we're now scaling.
No. The waitlist is free, and there's no commitment. You'll be the first to know when we open — and we'll tell you exactly what the product costs and how it works before you decide anything.
We're just getting started

We've proven the capture rate.
Now we need the scale.

14 billion lens packs get thrown away every year in the US. We've shown that 93% of them don't have to be — if the recovery system is in the right place at the right time. What we need now is more people in the loop to prove it holds.

If you wear contact lenses, this is the simplest thing you can do. Join the waitlist. When we're ready to ship, you'll be first.

93%
Capture rate in beta
2,360
Packs already out of landfill
14B
Lens packs thrown away in the US each year
Join the Waitlist — It's Free

No commitment. You'll be the first to know when we open.

Already in the beta? Access My Loop →

Get in touch

Questions? We read every email.

Whether it's about how the product works, the beta, or just wanting to understand the problem better — we're happy to talk.