At EssilorLuxottica, a key aspect of circularity is finding ways to extend the life of products or give them a second life, keeping valuable resources in circulation for longer. At the Group’s Rovereto plant in Italy, the new Circular Hub is turning this ambition into action.

The Circular Hub received the necessary authorizations for waste treatment activities and became operational earlier this year, with a dedicated 300-square-metre area for managing end-of-life eyewear. This marks an important milestone in further integrating circularity principles across the Company’s operations.

Building know-how to drive innovation

Eyewear can be particularly complex to manage at the end of its life due to the combination of different components and materials, including plastic, metal, and glass. At the Circular Hub, products are recorded, sorted and disassembled, with components separated before being directed to appropriate recycling and recovery routes.

By combining internal expertise with the capabilities of specialized partners, this hands-on approach enables EssilorLuxottica to deepen its understanding of materials and their end-of-life journey. Metal components, for example, can be recycled into secondary raw materials, while dedicated processes can recover valuable substances from surface treatments. Recent industrial trials have also demonstrated the potential to recover polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) from demo lenses*, supporting a circular approach that maintains material quality and performance.

Beyond individual recovery solutions, the Hub serves as a testing ground for innovative approaches that can be scaled across manufacturing activities and shared throughout the value chain. Insights generated through product disassembly and material recovery inform eco-design choices from the earliest stages of product development and support the Company's efforts to anticipate evolving circular economy requirements in Europe.

Advancing the journey towards circularity

The Circular Hub is part of EssilorLuxottica's broader Eyes on the Planet sustainability program, supporting its commitment to advancing circularity through the use of recycled and bio-based materials, the adoption of eco-design principles and the strengthening of internal recycling capabilities.

This journey also extends to consumers through the Group’s takeback program, which enables wearers to return used sunglasses and prescription frames free of charge at participating stores. Since its launch in 2023, the program has expanded to approximately 1,500 proprietary retail locations across EMEA, with plans to extend to other regions.

By bringing together operational expertise, innovation and collaboration, EssilorLuxottica is exploring new ways to recover value from used, obsolete and defective products. The Circular Hub represents an important milestone in this journey, helping connect key stages of the product lifecycle, from design and material selection to collection, recovery and recycling.

*Demo lenses: the temporary plastic lenses fitted into frames for display and handling before prescription or plano lenses are added