Karün Creates Eyewear Out of Trash
The Patagonia- based eyewear company is making strides with its sustainability efforts by creating products out of recycled materials like fishing nets, car parts and cigarette butts.
Since launching in 2012, Karün has scaled a sustainability-minded eyewear business from turning trash into products, supporting local communities by collecting waste from natural ecosystems across the globe.
Founder Thomas Kimber launched the eyewear brand with what he described as a “regeneration model,” which is a multipronged approach that focuses on utilizing innovative recycled materials, supporting local communities and ecosystems and providing full transparency to customers, all while creating high-quality eyewear.
“We believe we don't have to recreate new products necessarily or newness — we have enough,” Kimber said. “We need to change the way that the products that are already existing are made, so we focus on making very high-quality products under a very different way that at the same time can help empower local communities and can help regenerate natural ecosystems while innovating at the highest level, from Patagonia to the world.”
Over the years, Karün has worked to be first to market with products made of innovative recycled materials. Kimber said Karün was one of the first eyewear brands to create sunglasses from recycled wood in 2012, and then followed up the innovation with sunglasses made from recycled fishing nets.
Karün also uses recycled materials like metal frames and pipes, leather, cardboard, car lights and ocean plastics for its sunglasses. The brand partners with various companies to transform the recycled materials through chemical and mechanical processes to give them the characteristics of virgin materials.
Kimber said the brand puts as much emphasis on utilizing sustainable materials as it does on supporting local communities and ecosystems. To source these materials, Karün works with local groups in
Patagonia and Chile, as well as other regions in India, China, Thailand and Europe to support “places that normally don't have opportunities,” Kimber said.
“We work with communities through people that we call impact leaders,” Kimber said. “Impact leaders go out and they collect the fishing nets, the metals and the car lights. They sell it to us, we pay them per kilo and a key thing is that we work with them after that so they can turn that income that they receive into seed capital so that they can start their own micro businesses, which starts a whole virtuous cycle around their own activities in their own communities and they become leaders that are respected.”
This sourcing model not only brings income to underserved communities, but helps clean up and restore ecosystems, the company said.
Karün also developed a blockchainbased traceability system that gives shoppers insight into the sourcing and manufacturing behind their eyewear so they know “the journey [the eyewear] took around the world so that it can get in your hands,” Kimber said.
In the first quarter of the year, Karün released arguably its most innovative project to date: eyewear designed from cigarette butts.
“Cigarette butts are a huge problem, and every single city in the world has the same problem,” Kimber said. “It's one of the most complicated forms of plastic pollution in the world. One cigarette butt alone has more than 7,000 toxic chemicals. It's insane. And, that one cigarette butt alone contaminates more than 50 liters of water and makes it toxic. When cigarette butts go into the rivers, the waterways in general and the ocean, imagine how much of a mess we're making.”
Karün has launched a pilot program in Chile to collect the cigarette butts, he
said, and then works with Chilean cleantech company Imeko to chemically remove the toxins from the acetate of the cigarette butts, which is then used to design the eyewear.
The founder said he hopes to bring the pilot program to other cities and is looking at New York City or Miami as the brand's next target region.
Alongside the material innovations, Karün has been building out its distribution across the globe. The brand has more than 5,000 points of sale in 17 countries, partnering with major retailers like GrandVision in Europe and Grupo Devlyn in Mexico.
In December, Karün embarked on its first major retail partnership in the U.S. with Walmart, entering 1,500 doors. Kimber said the brand is expected to expand to all Walmart doors in the near future.
“It's been an extremely difficult journey for us being a small company from Patagonia,” he said. “It's a very faraway place, just physically getting to the U.S. is already a challenge. Getting the funding is a big challenge, getting the opportunities to get into the doors of these markets is a big challenge, but we're very happy with the reception that we have.”
In addition to its global distribution, the brand has also teamed with actress Shailene Woodley and National Geographic on collaborations and is the official eyewear sponsor of The Ocean Race.
“The customers that wear Karün understand two key things: the first thing is the quality of the product — it's a very high-quality product. The second one is that you can at least trust that we are doing everything we can to do things in a way that is as coherent as we possibly can and as responsible as we possibly can,” Kimber said.
Going forward, Karün will continue its focus on using innovative, sustainable materials and expand its scope beyond eyewear. Earlier this month, the brand announced its first category expansion in partnership with environmental organization Join the Planet to recreate soccer player Lionel Messi's left cleat with recycled materials. The cleat is a collectible item that also utilizes the Karün Traceability System.
Through its initiatives, sustainability and restoring natural ecosystems remain Karün's core focus, Kimber said.
“Karün means to be nature — it's a beautiful word in the Indigenous language of the people in Chile and Patagonia,” Kimber said. “In Karün, we're proposing a way to understand companies and products from a different perspective. One in which you can create the highest-quality products without making damage or making the least amount of damage and helping to restore local communities and natural ecosystems with full transparency to customers.”