Do you have eyeglasses that you no longer use? The Hanover Lions Club recycles these and gets them to people around the world who can use them. Donation boxes are at:
•The Howe Library
•The Hanover Coop
•The Lebanon Coop
•Kendal at Hanover
Please leave your unneeded eyeglasses in the boxes at these locations, and we will pick them up, sort them, and get them ready to send to the central processing site in Virginia.
In the past we have collected over 2000 pairs of glasses per year from the Hanover/Lebanon area. This year we have processed more than 300 pairs, and counting.
We collect hearing aids, too, at the same above locations. We deliver the hearing aids to the Audiology Department at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center where they refurbish them and provide them at no or low cost to appropriate recipients.
What happens to the eyeglasses once they are collected?
The Lions Club International (LCI) collects and donates about thirty million eyeglasses worldwide each year. All of the individual Lions Clubs in small towns and cities across the country who collect eyeglasses send them to regional recycling centers. Once received, volunteers wash, sterilize, and determine the prescription of the glasses, then inventory and prepare them for distribution. Requests for these glasses come from optical, medical, and missionary organizations around the globe. Eyeglasses that are classified as readers are shipped to locations in the United States, typically free clinics and health fairs. Contact lenses are not accepted. Goodwill will accept unused, unopened, and unexpired contact lenses. Visit the Goodwill in your area, but call ahead to double check.
The Hanover Lions send the eyeglasses you donate via our local collection boxes to Lions Eyeglasses Recycling, Inc, in Roanoke, VA. Lion Jim Newman, the manager of the facility, will accept all eyeglasses—prescription, nonprescription, safety, and sunglasses—regardless of their condition. They do not accept loose lenses or glasses cases. Broken and incomplete glasses are shipped to a scrapping company in California, which reimburses him for the metal they extract from the frames. Jim sends all the complete sunglasses he receives to a missionary in the Midwest, which in turn, distributes them to their missions in Central America.
The good news is that each donated pair of eyeglasses to the Lions is put to its best use: matched with a deserving recipient, or repurposed and recycled. Hanover Lions have collected as many as 2000 eyeglasses in a year, but oftentimes much less: our totals vary year to year, but we are always grateful. Thank you to all who contribute your used eyeglasses so that people who otherwise cannot obtain glasses are able to see.
