Marine Electronics
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Revo (Foothill Ranch, California), an affiliate of the Luxottica Group (NYSE: LUX; MTA: LUX), based in Milan, Italy, has announced that it has become the exclusive eyewear provider for the Plastiki expedition. Revo joins a growing list of high profile corporations involved in the expedition including IWC Schaffhausen, Hewlett-Packard, immarsat, and Kiehls.
Revo’s part in the three-month long transpacific journey to begin in March 2010, will be to assure that the crew’s eyes are well-protected from the ultraviolet rays from the sun and reflected off the ocean. Revo’s sunglasses may not only give the crew the best protection, but also give the crew the best visibility. The polarized lens technology used in these sunglasses was originally designed for NASA. As you might expect, these sunglasses are not just any ordinary sunglasses. Look through them on a hazy day and the haze disappears. They also are rock hard, lightweight and designed for fashion and comfort.
Revo, as a sponsor and as a company, is showing the world that it has made a commitment to the environment. As an environmental fashion company, Revo offers the unisex Revo Eco Collection. These sunglasses are made from a frame material derived from 100% recycled pre-consumer polymer resins, and the seed of the castor bean plant. These materials are a break in tradition in the sunglass world, which for the most part still relies on petroleum based products to make their plastics.
The goal of the Plastiki expedition, which will be skippered by Jo Royle and co-skippered by David Thompson, is to show the world that recycled plastics are valuable, too valuable to just throw into the ocean. The Plastiki expedition came about as an idea from the founder of Adventure Ecology, David de Rothschild. That organization promotes education on environmental issues, and one of its major media vehicles is field adventures, like boat journeys. Adventure Ecology also has a long-term goal to create a global youth-based community of change-makers.
The Plastiki expedition, which will travel from San Francisco to Sydney Australia, will no doubt make the world aware that there is money in recycled plastic. One of the reasons, according to the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers (Washington D.C.), is that “over the last two decades, America’s plastics and recycling industries have invested over $2 billion in developing technologies and the infrastructure to recycle plastics in communities across the nation.” And that technology, has not just allowed the creation of state-of-the-art recycled boats, like the one on the Plastiki expedition, but state-of-the art plastic lumber. Epic, of Lodi, California, produces thousands of miles of its Bend-a-Board line of landscape lumber products every year. To do that it uses over 144 million shampoo, milk and other HDPE#2 recycled plastic containers, diverting over 15 million pounds of plastic from landfills every year.
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