A medical student-led effort to collect and recycle contact lenses and their packaging across 11 academic institutions nationwide was able to divert more than 100 lb of plastic waste from reaching the landfills over about a 6-month period. The amount collected equates to the weight of 2654 500 mL plastic water bottles, said Nitya Devireddy, MD, MPH, 2026 graduate of Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, who led the project.
Devireddy was among 150-plus medical students involved in EyeSustain, a global coalition of ophthalmologists, eye societies, and organizations committed to sustainability efforts in eye care, where she led the medical student committee鈥檚 education team. Her group was looking for a pilot sustainability program to implement and came up with collecting contact lens waste.
鈥淲e thought contact lenses were kind of an underlooked area of waste that鈥檚 produced,鈥� said Devireddy, who presented the results of the initiative at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) 2026 Annual Meeting. 鈥淲e have so many contact lens users in the US. Not a lot of people really know what to do with their contact lenses鈥� after using them.