About this project
We Are Yuma. We turn plastic waste into quality sunglasses.
By 2050 there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish if we continue to waste our plastic waste. With our sunglasses we want to inspire people to take another look at waste.
Discover our unique collection of sunglasses made from freshly recycled car dashboards, soda bottles and fridges. 3D printed and assembled by hand.
Our mission: to kickstart a future where waste is a concept of the past.
We want to create conversation starters that inspire new ways of thinking about waste.
3D printed and assembled by hand for ultimate comfort and style. Our sunglasses are designed for disassembly which means that they can be easily taken apart for recycling. Even the text on the temples is 3D printed from recycled fridges.
5 designs, made from 100% recycled black car dashboards. They come with high quality UV protective lenses, a foldable cork case and cleaning cloth made from recycled PET plastic.
With our 3D printing technology, we can create an almost infinite variety of designs. That is why our sunglasses are named after the stars in the universe, leaving us with plenty names for the coming years.
Named after Alpha Cephei, a bright star on the northern nights sky; 17 times brighter than our own Sun. Bring sunscreen.
Made from recycled black car dashboard with your choice of lenses (grey, green or brown).
Named after Ross 154, a young rising star at 10 light-years from earth.
Made from recycled black car dashboard with your choice of lenses (grey, green or brown).
Gemma, our jewel, named after a star almost 60 times brighter than our own Sun at 75 light-years from earth.
Made from recycled black car dashboard with your choice of lenses (grey, green or brown).
Please step back, Caph is one of the brightest stars in the Cassiopeiae constellation and is almost 4 times larger than our Sun.
Made from recycled black car dashboard with your choice of lenses (grey, green or brown).
Gienah comes from the Arabic word for wing. This giant star shines 350 times brighter than our Sun. (No worries, 100% UV protection.)
Made from recycled black car dashboard with your choice of lenses (grey, green or brown).
Made from durable recycled soda bottles. Our 5 models, available in semi-transparant white. 90% recycled PET plastic, 100% UV protection. It takes about 2 small soda bottles to make a pair of these sunnies.
Only 30 pieces available. They come with high quality CR39 lenses, a foldable cork case and cleaning cloth, also from recycled PET plastic.
Why are there only 30 available? Because these are just way too cool to squander and because they take a very long time to print in our precision 3D printer and need special love to give it a nice smooth polish.
We found that round to oval faces look best with frames that have slightly sharper angular lines like the Caph, Gemma or Ross. If your face is a bit more square, then frames with more curved features like the Cephei, Gienah, Caph or even the Ross will certainly look great on you.
But hey, with a smile on your face, all sunglasses make you look awesome.
Your sunglasses come with your choice of CR39 lenses with 100% UVA/UVB protection. These lenses of truly remarkable visual quality are made by Mazzuchelli in Italy and rival the best sunglasses on the market. Laser cut to fit our frames. Available in grey and green. Also available in brown as a stretch goal when the project reaches at least 20.000 euros in funding!
It takes about 88 layers of 0,09 mm high precision 3D printed layers to make a frame, layer by layer. These thin lines give a subtle organic character, much like the lines in the trunk of a tree. We choose to polish our frames to a soft matte finish, providing optimal comfort while revealing these thin characteristic 3D print lines.
No need to carry a bulky sunglasses case.
Our durable hardcase folds up like an enveloppe and even fits your back pocket. Made from sustainably harvested cork.
Fits all standard sized glasses.
Also sold separately. Comes with our microfibre cleaning cloth made from recycled PET plastic.
This is the age of plastic. Every year we produce as much plastic as the total weight of all people on earth (about 300 billion kg), but only a small fraction of plastic waste is recycled. With a truck load ending up in our oceans every minute, we will have more plastic in our oceans than fish by 2050. We need change.
From the start it has been our mission to create conversation starters that inspire new ways of thinking about the future of waste.
Sustainability and ‘doing less with more’ will not cut it. We believe we need to radically rethink the way we live and use our everyday products. We need a fundamental change towards a closed loop, circular economy where waste does no longer exist. ‘Waste’, after all, is a human concept; life has done without for 3.8 billion years.
We believe that just using recycled materials to make our sunglasses is merely delaying waste. That is why we are determined to eventually recycle our frames once you are done wearing them. Our sunglasses are designed for disassembly (so no glues or toxic dyes) so they can be easily taken apart for recycling.
We think that plastic pollution is a symptom of a larger problem. In our ever connected lives we have never been more disconnected from the products we buy. How can we make the right choices if we don’t know where our stuff comes from or where it goes to after use? The problem, we believe, is not technical, but mental; that is why we first need to rethink the concept of waste and start the right conversations.
Join us in our mission to rethink waste and help us start the conversation we desperately need to have.
Our package is designed in such a way that it will fit your mailbox so you'll find your new sunnies at your doormat (if your mailbox is international standard, i.e. at least 3 cm high). All materials are recyclable and eco-friendly, so no plastics!
We offset emissions for shipping our products across the world via carbon offsetting. This means that the CO2 emissions are compensated with projects that capture or avoid an equivalent amount of CO2, making it a carbon neutral journey.
Belgium and the Netherlands: 5 €. Europe and USA: 8 €. Rest of the world: 14 €.
Making sunglasses from recycled materials with new 3D printing technology was no easy task. Being the first in the world is exciting, but also challenging as no-one can show you the ropes; we had to rethink the product and re-engineer our printers. After 18 months of relentless prototyping, testing and tweaking we truly found over a 1,000 ways how not to 3D print sunglasses, but we finally found the sweet spot!
W.r.yuma was founded by Sebastiaan, a mechanical engineer previously working in sustainability consultancy. He quit his dayjob and gathered the machines, a small budget and people around him to start prototyping. Our company is named after the sunniest place on earth, Yuma (USA).
We have received tremendous support from our online community and direct suppliers who are eager to experiment with us and join our mission. This is exactly what the 'we' in w.r.yuma stands for; it’s about all the people involved in created a closed-loop and awesome product.
Summer next year you can find us at music festivals throughout Belgium and the Netherlands where we will 3D print live using recycled festival drinking cups.
Until now we mostly funded this project with our own savings. With your financial support we can fund our first production run and buy the ingredients like lenses, hinges, cleaning cloths, shipping boxes etc.
We are in this for the long run. In the near future we will recycle your old w.r.yuma sunglasses when you send them back to us, while you receive a discount on your next pair. The longer you hold on to your sunglasses, the higher the discount will be. This service will not yet be available for the sunglasses purchased during this Kickstarter campaign. We need some more time to sort out the complex logistics involved with dedicated software so we can make the return and recycling process as smooth as possible.
With your financial support we will be able to continue our quest towards completely zero waste sunglasses.
FAQ’s
Risks and challenges
Thanks to the tremendous support of our suppliers and advisors we believe we have done everything we can to reduce the remaining risks for this project to a minimum. We have taken our prototypes and production setup as far as possible and are now ready to start our first production run.
We’ve thoroughly tested all models for fit, durability and quality. After having tried them with a lot of friends we are sure there is at least one which will perfectly fit your shape and type of face. There is not a single pair of sunglasses that will leave our microfactory without a thorough quality check.
As with any project there can always be surprises but we are confident that we can deliver on schedule. All production will be done in our own microfactory with our own printers and we will assembly each pair by hand. This is our first major production run however, so we have calculated and reserved some extra time to buffer for unforeseen hiccups during production.
Duty/VAT & Customs: If you live outside of the EU or the USA, you will be responsible for any applicable duty/VAT charges. This is outside of our control and in the jurisdiction of your country’s customs office. If you face any issues, we will of course cooperate efficiently with the respective customs office.
We will keep you updated on the progress of production. We will be sure to respond to all of your individual questions, just post in the comments section or drop an email to Kiki at love@wryuma.com.
So now we need you! We are truly excited to begin this journey and we can’t wait to share it with you!
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