"With my sunglasses, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and 60." -Jack Nicholson
Things whose 15 minutes are definitely up: Speidi, designer bottled water and your old, trendy sunnies from last year. We'll leave the first two has-beens alone; but if you're looking to give your old shades the boot and try some new sun eye wear, KAYU has the perfect solution. The company's glam and chic sunglasses are made from eco-friendly, sustainable bamboo. But that's not the only thing that will help your karma; purchasing one pair of glasses may just help someone across the world see again.
According to the KAYU website, "80 percent of blindness is curable or preventable, yet 36 million people are needlessly blind. Avoidable blindness is the most common in the poorest of the poor, and has far reaching implications that touch on all aspects of human development-social, economic and quality of life. Eliminating preventable blindness is one of the world's most urgent problems and one that persists due to a lack of funds." So, KAYU founder Jamie Lim (born in Texas and raised in Malaysia and Hong Kong) decided to help make a difference and left the corporate rat race to make ethically produced eyeglasses with sustainable materials while bringing the gift of sight to those around the world. KAYU is in partnership with the non-profit organization Unite for Sight and promotes the elimination of preventable blindness by contributing $50 from each pair of glasses sold. That $50 is enough to fund a sight-restoring cataract surgery. According to Ode magazine (where the sunglasses made their Organic Top 20 list), many of these sight-restoring operations KAYU helps fund are done in Africa where mortality rates for the blind are four times higher than for sighted people. KAYU's mantra is "one pair of sunglasses=one sight-restoring surgery". Now, that is definitely worth more than 15 minutes of fame.
image source: kayudesign.com
-SD
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