I have worn One A Day disposable contacts for 6 or 7 years now, and I've never really thought about it until now. Almost every day I open two new plastic packages of contacts and then throw them out almost immediately. Some weeks I wear glasses, but I only started wearing glasses within the past 2 or 3 years. Before then it was contacts everyday, and even now I still go through a considerable amount of lenses each month and each year. I started feeling really guilty about this and considered switching to something other than the One Days. This would be a huge lifestyle change, but if it reduced my impact I thought it would be worth it. However, when I thought about it I wasn't sure it would make a huge difference. When you use more permanent contact lenses you need to use a lot of chemical solutions that also come in big plastic bottles. In the end I might be using just as much plastic and maybe more chemicals in order to maintain long-wear contacts. I am no expert in this and there probably haven't been any studies on the environmental impact of different kinds of contacts, but it is probably worth looking into. So what am I suggesting you do? Just think about it. Everything in our lives has some kind of environmental impact, and there are always ways to change our habits and reduce our impact. All you have to do is think about it.
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