The New Modo ECO Eyewear Collection at Urban Optiques Melds Style with Sustainability.  Eyewear Made from 95% Recycled Materials!

Okay, let’s just get this out of the way: If you are over 25 you’ll remember a time when “eco-friendly” and “fashionable” would not be uttered in the same sentence.  While Birkenstocks are great for your feet, I’m pretty certain “stylish” was never a term that applied to them.

But over the past few years, all of that has changed. Designers and retailers have come up with all kinds of creative ways to produce truly stylish eco-friendly and sustainable products from recycled materials.  One of our favorites is the Harvey Tote made from recycled seat belts, which sounds utterly horrible until you actually see it.  Turns out that seatbelts can be actually quite beautiful when weaved together into a purse or handbag.

Or take the new Modo ECO Eyewear Collection that we just added at Urban Optiques: More than 25 eyeglasses and sunglass models made from 95% recycled plastic and stainless steel. Not only are they environmentally-responsible, but they also look amazing.

MODO ECO Eyewear: Certified “Green”

The Modo ECO (Earth Conscious Optics) line is an eyewear collection marked by “firsts.” It’s the first optical and sunglass collection to be made entirely of recycled materials.  It’s also the first-ever consumer brand and eyewear collection to receive an Environmental Claims Validation (ECV) from UL Environment (ULE), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a world leader in product evaluation. Getting a Environmental Claims Validation is not an easy process, so it’s quite an achievement for the New York based boutique eyewear maker.

Everything about the new Modo ECO line is about sustainability, right down to the packaging. In addition to using recycled and repurposed materials to create the frames, the collection is packaged in recycled materials and each new pair is accompanied by an easy to use mail-in recycling kit that allows you to donate your unwanted frames to charities that help supply eyeglasses to developing countries.

To top it all off, for each pair of ECO frames purchased, Modo donates one new tree to “Trees for the Future,” a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees since 1989.  The trees that Trees for the Future plant are helping reverse decades of deforestation in some of the most sensitive and biologically diverse ecosystems in the world.  Modo ECO plans to plant over a half a million trees in 2010 from sales of their eyewear. We’d like to help them get to one million (more on that in a moment.)

The Modo ECO Eyewear Collection is made up of both acetate (plastic) and metal frames, so it offers a wide range of design, style, color and material options.  We were actually quite amazed when we first saw the line at how well-styled these frames are.  They offer something for just about anyone, from classic metals and plastics, to retro-inspired shapes.

Buy A Pair of MODO ECO Eyeglasses or Sunglasses & Urban Optiques Will Plant 50 Trees!

To celebrate the addition of this fantastic new green eyewear line at Urban Optiques, and to help Modo ECO reach it’s  goal of planting a half million trees this year, when you purchase a pair of Modo ECO eyeglass frames or sunglasses from Urban Optiques, we’ll plant 50 trees on your behalf through Trees for the Future.  Just another great reason to go green with your eyewear.

Check out the new Modo ECO Collection below!

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