Your face can save lives: WWF Australia and VisionDirect create sustainable sunglasses

They’re now turning gill nets into sunglasses and the world’s bloody thankful! The World Wide Fund for Nature-Australia and eyewear company VisionDirect are teaming up to upcycle the plastic net, taking enough of the stuff to make 1,000 pairs of shades for the environmentally-minded trendsetter amongst us. It all comes after the initiative from 2018, where thousands of supporter donations helped WWF-Australia buy and retire the licence for the last commercial gill net operating full-time in the northern Great Barrier Reef. Talk about success. At the end of the day, it was all to protect dugongs and other endangered marine creatures which can be accidentally caught as bycatch and quickly drown; but not anymore. VisionDirect CEO David Menning said upcycling old nets is another way to give back to the community, following on from the company’s program to donate eyeglasses in less fortunate nations. But what will they do with the first thousand pairs they’ve made? Well, they come embossed with a marine animal whose future depends on a Net Free North, and half of the money they make from sales will go back to WWF for conservation work like advocacy for a #NetFreeNorth. For more info and to be apart of it all, head to the Vision Direct website.