1st January 2020 | A letter from our Founder

Happy New Year!

#project2x2 is Two of a Kind’s newest and most important “product”: we collect your used contact lens blisters (ANY AND ALL brands – not just twooak’s) for recycling.

This means that what you usually dispose of after single-use is processed back into feedstock material that finds its way back into new and repurposed applications and products. This helps contribute to a more circular, less wasteful, and less pollutive plastics system. 

We launched #project2x2 on 29 October 2019 and today are proud to unveil our microsite for this recycling initiative. Mail or drop-off your used polypropylene blisters. We’ve tried to make this as seamless as possible for you. Please do check out www.twooak.com/2×2/ to find out more and to participate. 

On that note, I am humbled by the community of inspiring people who have already shown overwhelming support since launch two months ago. Because of you, we already have a network of Advocate drop-off locations instead of just one, and have already received tens of thousands of pieces from hundreds of people.

This also means that #project2x2 makes an impact only as well as people know about it and contribute by participating. Please please please spread the word.

Let’s do this! Tag #project2x2 on social media and please share this post with your friends.

There are also other ways to help. We’d be thrilled to add you to our Advocate drop-off location network, and are also looking for enterprise partners who can help with logistics and to expand the materials we are able to recycle. Please contact us through our website and / or DM us on FB or IG @twooak.

While you’re here …

Many of you have asked the same question we did when we started: why hasn’t this already been done? The contact lens industry in Singapore is dominated by large multinational brands and optical chain stores. Both of whom have means, resources and networks several times our’s. We are thrilled of course to be the first to introduce contact lens recycling here in Singapore, but puzzled that there hadn’t already been a solution provided by incumbent stores or brands.

Here’s what we found: They just don’t care. We know this because we asked.

A program that is open to competitor’s brands or products? Let me get back to you.

Only a small number of people care. Not sure we can justify the cost.

Ultimately, it was also apparent that no one was keen on putting any time or resources into “something” unless they could see an already established instance of “something” directly benefiting their own interests and sales targets.

The worst:

Promote a program that affirms the problematic state of the materials used in our products? Customers are not ready for that.

We disagree. And thank you for disagreeing too.

Let’s face it: There are effects and consequences to the choices we make as consumers. And that is what #project2x2 is: A way for contact lens users in Singapore to take responsibility and ownership for the choices we make as consumers. No more, no less.

And that is a good thing.

It is therefore our humble hope that the support you give to us helps send a message to the optical industry at large as well as all consumer facing companies over time:

We care. Now give us a way to do something about it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for supporting #project2x2. You are the one making an impact here – and I am sincerely grateful for that. 

Happy New Year and all the best.

Sincerely,

Darryn Tan | CEO | Founder | Two of a Kind