Haute talk with Claire Ring | Sustainable Shades: The Story of Cocoplum Sunglasses

What happens when something as ordinary as an orange prescription bottle becomes the starting point for a pair of sunglasses?

This week, Lexy sits down with Claire Ring, founder of Cocoplum, a circular eyewear brand turning discarded prescription pill bottles into bold, wearable frames. Claire proves that recycled materials do not have to look dull or feel like a compromise. They can be functional, stylish, and part of a much smarter system.

Claire shares how Cocoplum transforms plastic waste through a process of collecting, cleaning, shredding, melting, and molding pill bottles into new sunglasses. She and Lexy talk about why these small plastic containers are so difficult to recycle through normal curbside programs and what it takes to build a product around material most people overlook. They also explore Cocoplum’s closed-loop approach, which allows customers to send worn frames back so the materials can stay in use instead of ending up in a landfill.

The conversation gets honest about starting a sustainable company without a background in recycling, manufacturing, or eyewear design. Claire discusses learning through experimentation, adapting when early ideas did not work, and creating a brand that challenges fashion’s dependence on virgin plastic and disposable products. It is a practical, hopeful look at circular fashion and the creative possibilities hiding inside everyday waste.

Listen to the full episode, subscribe to The Lexy Show, and share it with someone who believes sustainability should look just as good as it feels.

Social Media

Cocoplum: @cocoplumsunglasses
Website: cocoplumco.com

If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe to The Lexy Show, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who's ready to make more mindful choices for themselves and the planet. For more information visit https://lexysilverstein.com/

Transcript

Lex-Claire Ring

[00:00:00] 

Welcome to the.

Welcome to the Lexi Show Fashion that Gibs a dam where we expose fast fashion and celebrate the brands and products actually making a difference for our planet. I'm Lexi Silverstein, and today I'm talking with Claire Ring, founder of Cocoa Plum, turning Old Pill bottles into sunglasses you'll actually want to wear.

If you're near hear, head to lexi silverstein.com for information on sustainable fashion and eco-conscious living. And if you love what you hear, subscribe and share this episode. It helps more than you think. Can you explain the concept behind Cocoa Plum and where it came from?

Yeah, so basically I collect prescription pill bottles like these. Okay. Literally have, yeah. Yeah. And I recycle them into sunglasses like these. And the whole idea started. Back in 2020 during COVID when I was just at home all the time and it was really hard to ignore how much plastic waste my household was [00:01:00] going through.

And I just remember like we had this blue recycling bin in our kitchen and I would just watch it fill up day after day, even as somebody who was really trying to reduce that. And yeah, one day I just was like looking at it and I was like, it's so crazy. And I knew most of it wasn't being recycled.

I just was like, I'm going to make something with plastic waste. I like put a little note in my phone, make something with plastic waste. And at that time I didn't know what it would be or where I would get the plastic from, but eventually it led to making sunglasses out of pill bottles. That is so cool.

So what makes pill bottles such a unique material to work with? Yeah. So I decided to work with pill bottles for three reasons. One, they aren't normally recycled and I didn't know this when I first came across them, but if you put them in your recycling bin, they most likely don't get recycled.

Less than 5% of them do. That's because of the size and the type of plastic they're made of. But mostly they're too [00:02:00] small for the sorting machines at recycling facilities. So that was a big thing. They're not recycled. Number two, there's so many of them. If you take all of the pill bottles that Americans go through in one year and line them up, it's enough to circle the earth five times.

And that's just in one year. So it's a huge waste stream. And lastly, I didn't wanna use something like water bottles or, straws or I don't know, things that like you can avoid and we should be avoiding for people who take medications regularly, there, these bottles are the only option and you can't avoid them, really.

So I know people appreciate at least having a way to recycle them. No, completely. I think it's just so cool because it's like not something that you necessarily, it's an item that you don't always think about. We were, we're talking a lot about, our single use plastics a lot more recently.

And we talk in that as in that realm of things we talk about, like the recycling, our, single use [00:03:00] water bottles and stuff like that. But pill bottles is not something that I think that we're talking about enough. And I, yeah, and it's something that everybody like can picture, like everybody knows those little orange bottles.

Oh yeah, for sure. And it's again, like you were saying, like it's. It's something that we can't always avoid, getting if you need. Yeah. There's not another alternative. Yeah. Sadly. I wish there were. I love it. So people can send in pill bottles or old cocoa plum sunglasses to be recycled.

Can you talk about how this process worked? Yeah, so I do take back the sunglasses at the end of their life. If when anybody decides they're through with them, I take 'em back and recycle them into new products. And then anyone can also donate their pill bottles. I have. Some drop off locations all over the country.

I think I have 10 set up right now. So you can go on my website and in the frequently asked questions, it lists all of those locations and if anybody wants to donate them and doesn't [00:04:00] live near one, they can ship them to me. I just ask that they collect a minimum of 20 bottles and then the labels need to be completely removed and the lids removed.

'cause it, right now I'm only recycling the bottles. I'm not able to use the lids, but that may change. And yeah. And then once I receive them I email that person a discount code for 20% off as a thank you. That's awesome. So how do the bottles then become the sunglasses? So I sort them by color.

And by how clean they're, sometimes I need to clean them a little bit more. Then I take them to a place called Peninsula Precious Plastic. I shred them and then I make sunglasses with a process called injection molding, which basically means the plastic gets melted and then injected into molds that shapes, shapes them into sunglasses.

That is so cool. I love this. Such [00:05:00] a. I just can't even, I'm like looking at this pill bottle next. You, I'm like, this becoming a sunglasses is so cool. Thank you. How brilliant of an idea. And I think that's a lot like of what we, a lot more of what we need to be doing is thinking, like looking at these things around us and before we throw something out, like seeing what we can do with it to avoid and what we, just using more of what's already out there.

Totally. Yeah. That's so cool. So if you, do you ever need to source the bottles outside of what people send you? And if so, where do you do the sourcing? So far? No. I've actually had to turn down, organizations have reached out to me like some pharmacies and nursing homes and churches, and I've had to say no to that because I just don't wanna get overwhelmed with the pill bottles.

So right now I'm prioritizing individual donations and that has been plenty. It's like the right amount. And sure if the time comes that I need to source them, I could partner with one [00:06:00] pharmacy and get. Plenty of them. Yeah. Yeah. I did recently though. So Mo, 99% of the bottles that come to me are this orange color.

But there are different colors. There's this blue and green. Ooh. And recently I ran out of green. So I'm considering reaching out to those come from vet offices, so I might, I was gonna say, I think I, for my dog, I think I have some blue ones. Oh, send 'em my way. I'll, yeah. So I might have to like, come up with a way to source the green and maybe blue and I think I'll just reach out to a veterinarian.

That's so cool. I love that. I think is that, do you think maybe. A goal in the future is to be able to maybe scale to, taking on some of those. Oh, totally. Yeah. I would love that. Right now it's just me though, and I have plenty more than enough. Really. Yeah. Again, it's it's something that we all might, we might not even realize that we have it.

I feel [00:07:00] like I have like pill bottles from oh my God, I hear that every day. Yeah. I get emails every day from people who wanna, because that's how, that's how people get started. If anybody wants to send me their pill bottles, I ask that they send me an email to hello@cocoplumco.com.

And I read that all the time in people's emails I've been saving pill bottles for 10 years. I just never knew what to do with them. Can I send them to you? Yeah. It's a thing people do. I love that. That's so perfect. This is such, such a great. I just thank you. I just think we need to be thinking more creatively.

If everyone just looked at like things around us and was like, I could turn this into this. I've been, I was watching this another kind of like example and it was like a DIY and and this, there's this girl and she like has all these wine bottles and she turns them into like cups just using like a glass cutter.

And I was like, yeah. This is the innovation I like to see guys like I've seen those. I love that. That's so cool. Let's just keep thinking outside the box and there's so many things. I'm just like looking around my apartment now and I'm like, there's so many things that when I'm done with [00:08:00] them, like I'm just usually would just throw them out, but.

I'm, I've been really rethinking my trash. Like every time I stick something in the trash, I'm like, what else I do. Yeah. And I'm like becoming a problem because I have so many little jars now, like I don't even know what I'm gonna do with them, but I'm gonna do something. I love that. Yeah. So you have some new sunglasses available.

Can you explain what this new, what's new with this launch? Yeah. When I first had this idea, my plan was to make the sunglasses in my garage, and I had this whole setup for that. I had a small manual machine built and molds made for that machine, and for literally four years, I.

And I did I made sunglasses and I was selling them, but it was so slow. I would work all day and like maybe have one pair of sunglasses to show up for it at the end of the day. So last, I think [00:09:00] like March of last year. I was like, I need to change something. I need to speed this up somehow. So I decided to do a Kickstarter to raise money to make molds that would work with an industrial machine, like with a manufacturer.

So I'm no longer trying to make them in my garage. So my goal was like fif was $15,000 and it was funded. And so for the past. Nine months or so, I've been making these new molds and they were just completed recently. So it's for two molds to make a pair of sunglasses, you need one mold for the temples and then one mold for the frames.

So they were just completed and we are in the process of making a bunch of sunglasses with those molds. So that's what the new sunglasses are. That's so cool. It's so amazing to see like. How when you start a company and start a business, like the growth and changes that happen and the way we adapt [00:10:00] when.

Growing. Yeah. It was hard because I had put so much into that setup in my garage, like I built a machine for it and these molds that were not cheap and I basically had to just like scrap all of that and start all over. So that's why it probably took me four years to come to that decision.

But here we are. It worked out. Here we are. That's that. And a lot of learning. It's all part of the journey. Exactly. Yeah. That's so cool. So what about the actual I, I don't know what you would call the lenses? Yeah. Lenses are those, what are those? Are those just like normal lenses? Yeah. So you can't use recycled plastic for lenses because of regulations.

But I did source the most sustainable lens lenses I could. They're Zeiss they're made in a factory that uses like recycled water and solar power. So they're their sustainable line and they're very high quality, a hundred percent U-V-A-U-V-V protection, [00:11:00] scratch resistant. So they're great lenses.

I wish I could use recycled plastic to make them, but. They have to be like shatterproof and perfectly clear. And that's hard to do with recycled plastic. Yeah, still we got the best option out there. Didn't even, that was op an option as well. And I think that's so important. 'cause I think we'll see a lot of things nowadays where it's not necessarily greenwashing all the time, but like for some I always bring up this example, but I saw like a commercial and it was like a razor that the razor itself was.

Made out plastic, but then it came in a fully plastic container and I was like I'm sorry, you froze. Can you hear me? Oh yes. Sorry. You just froze for the past like two minutes. No. Oh gosh. Is it good now? Yeah, and it was totally my fault. My computer said it. I had an unstable connection, so sorry about that.

No worries. It happens. I was just saying the. I saw a commercial and there it's like a razor made out of recycled plastic, but then it came in like a Foley plastic. Oh, I hate that. Yeah. I was like, girl, what are we doing? Like I know. That is so frustrating. I have put a ton of like time in, I use no plastic in my packaging.

That's amazing. Yeah. That's very frustrating when that happens. Yeah. But I think it's really cool that we're seeing a lot more. Innovation again, where it comes to these like smaller things that we don't necessarily always think about. Like I've been noticing a lot of the tags on our clothes. Yeah.

A lot of made from recycled [00:12:00] materials. Yeah. And I'm like, that's so cool. 'cause I would never really think about necessarily the tag or like things like that or even, the like little small package that comes in, things that is filled with something and you're always like, what is the point of this?

It like, has I don't even know what it is, it's or something. But I saw a company that like did that sustainably and I was like, that's so interesting. 'cause I, every time I look at this little packet that like comes in, like my food packages around, I don't even know. I'm like, what is the point of this?

Like I've I always just throw this out. Yeah. But to be able to produce that where it's okay, it's gonna get thrown out, but at least let's make it a sustainable thing. Like I just love seeing that innovation. It's so cool. I know. And I'm seeing it more and more on anything I buy.

It's like made from 50% recycled material. Yeah. Whatever. And I just love it. It's a, I love to see it. Let's get sustainability more accessible. Let's get it out there. Let's talk about it more. Let's see what we can. What else? We can turn into other things. So on that note, you've made a variety of items from sunglasses to also [00:13:00] ornaments to coasters as well.

Yeah. So like why these items and how does the creative process kind of differ for each. Yeah. My goal, my plan moving forward is to really just focus on sunglasses. But there was a time period when I had decided I was not gonna make sunglasses the old way in my garage, but I had to wait until the new ones were ready, which they will be ready to ship in March.

People can pre-order them now, but, so I'm still in this time period. People were still sending me lots of pill bottles. So I was like, I need to make something with this plastic. So during that time period, I decided to make coasters and ornaments because it's really a lot easier to make a mold for just a simple flat shape.

So I have some of the coasters right here. These are Oh, so cute. So yeah, I was just able to like quickly make a mold for that and it helped a ton to just eat up some of that plastic while I was waiting on the new [00:14:00] sunglasses. That's awesome. I think that's cool. Where it's like, again, just using as much of that plastic waste as possible and like always finding new ways of just using it.

Yeah. I mean I needed, I was gonna be buried in sunglasses. I didn't do something with it. Buried in pill bottles. Pill bottles.

Do you have all of them just like at your house now? Is that where it is? Yeah. Oh gosh. Okay. Yeah. There's like a corner in my garage where I have 'em organized. Thankfully, once they're shredded, it really, like they shrink down a lot, so it doesn't take up a ton of space. Was it easy to find a company that did the shredding of the plastic?

I do that, so I like clean them. I sort them, I shred them. This. Anybody's interested in starting a business recycling plastic. I recommend go check out Precious Plastics and see if there's anybody near you who's like working on anything. So that's how I found this. Near me is one called Peninsula [00:15:00] Precious Plastics, and they just have a shredder that they let me come use.

So that's where I shred the pill bottles. That's okay. That's really interesting. That's cool. Now I'm like gonna go look up like Yeah. Precious plastic. It's amazing. Go. Gonna, where are you located? I'm in Los Angeles, so I'm sure. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. There definitely something here. Yeah, I I'm gonna become more of a hoarder though, because I've been keeping all of my glass bottles I've been really crazy about that, where I'm like, if it's glass, I can use it for something else and I will be using it for something else.

But I'll, I feel like I throw away a good amount of plastic that I'm like, oh, I wanna do something with this, but I don't know what to do. So I'm now gonna be collecting all these plastic things. Yeah. Gonna become a problem. People are gonna come over. They're like, Lexi. Yeah. No, there's, even on precious plastic, there's even a bizarre on there where if you do wanna shred a bunch of plastic, you can then sell the shredded plastic.

[00:16:00] Ah, okay. Cool. This is so cool. Oh my gosh. I'm obsessed. I've been doing, because I haven't gone to it in a while, but in my area there's like the, it's called re-go and they, you could take your glass bottles and stuff and go to a grocery store and just fill up, like it's, instead of buying like a whole new, yeah.

Thing of detergent, you just bring a glass and you fill the detergent up in your glass. And so is it mostly food? It's mostly like a grocery store. Yeah, it's a lot of like rice and like spices and like nuts and nuts. Yeah. But then they also, they have like dishwasher detergent and then clothing detergent.

Love that. That's, we have, I don't know of any, like more of a grocery store refill shop near me like that. But we have a ton of refill shops that have stuff like that, like detergent, shampoos and [00:17:00] hand soaps. But not a lot of food. Yeah. That's cool. That's, I'm, I, yeah I need to do it more consistently 'cause I'm like, I'm.

It's really becoming a problem. All my, like random glass bottles, like they're just, that they're everywhere. And I want to do it more consistently, but I think that it's really cool that it's even like an option. And I've also seen, like recently there's a craft store near me that is all like people donated crafts and stuff, so you can just go instead of, because I think that's a big thing where it's like.

We're used to going to a Michael's or a hobby lobby and like those are the big chains that a lot of us know and have in our area and like whatever. But if we can, but there's already just, there's just so much stuff out there and I'm like, a lot of the crafts that I have are like the ribbon I have and I'm looking around at crafts.

I have, but I've gone to like estate sales. There's been a bunch of stuff [00:18:00] there. And I, that was like a goal of mine in 2026 was like, I wanna be a little bit, I wanna be more crafty, but I have a tendency to start crafts and then not finish them. So I was like, I am not, I refuse to buy any new materials.

If I'm doing a craft, it's going to be like using what I already have. That way if I don't stick with it okay, I didn't buy anything new. I'm not like. Wasting this material, and I'm not. Wasting money. But I think that in my process of becoming more of a crafty person, I found that it was like a thrift store for crafts.

Yeah. I recently discovered a similar one and I'm in the Bay area. And when I was trying to find ribbons for the ornaments that I made, yeah. I was just searching everywhere and I found a place like that resells, like leftover crafting supplies. Yeah. I'm just like I, we just, I just am. I feel like there's this video, there's this commercial I [00:19:00] keep seeing where it's like this girl and she's, it's very, it's a dark commercial.

It's it's about I, an nicotine addiction and it's like this girl, and she's like getting. She's like drowning in like vapes. And I, that's how I feel with when it comes to the stuff around me that I'm just like, there. I feel like I'm drowning in clothes. I feel like I'm, we're drowning in plastic.

There's just so much stuff that's already out there, and the more that we can do to reuse it, it is just, it's like giving me a will to live. I'm like, yes, I know. Two more of that. Yeah. So I always like to end my podcasts asking people what are their top tips for someone who's starting their journey to a more sustainable lifestyle.

You just made me think of one. Just when you're talking about all the stuff, there is something I did a couple years ago that helped me reduce. So much stuff that I was like buying was [00:20:00] cancel my Amazon Prime so I don't get free shit. Like I still use Amazon. But I only get free shipping if my shopping cart has I, I think it's like more than, I don't know what it is, $50 or $40.

So then I just put stuff instead of just every day ordering a four thing and a whatever, all this junk, I put it in my shopping cart and then I'll go back and I'll be like, oh, I don't really need that anymore. And I just end up ordering way less stuff and only stuff that I actually need, yeah, cancel your Amazon Prime. And also, I love refill shops. That's so the, some of the refill shops in my area collect pill bottles for me, so I go around to them a lot. And I've just fallen in love with them. So I always tell people like, go on your maps and find the refill, a refill shop close to you.

And just visit it. 'cause they have so many cool solutions for reducing waste. And they're just so fun. Yeah. No, [00:21:00] completely. I think that is 'cause the first time I went to one, I like don't, I don't really think I even grasped what it was or like what I could. Get when I was there. So I think that's a great idea of just visit it first.

Find bring one, one empty bottle, like a bottle. Just go and just chat stuff. Yeah. And then it's like the first time I went to, there's a few around me but like one of the ones I went to has a lot more food and the other one I went to has a lot more like home stuff. And so it was like, but these are, these were things I again wasn't even necessarily thinking about.

And then I went and I was like, oh, like now I know I can go there and, get this piece or get this or get that. But, I, I didn't know that I could get all things beforehand. So yeah, you'll discover all kinds of fun. Yeah. Love it First. Thank you so much. Where can people find you on social media or buy some sunglasses or ship [00:22:00] some pill bottles in?

Yeah. Okay. Most people find me on Instagram at Cocoa Plum sunglasses. I'm also on TikTok at Cocoa Plum Sunglasses. My website is. Coco plum co.com and if anybody wants to donate pill bottles, they just can email hello@cocoplumco.com and I'll re reply with the shipping address and all the details.

Amazing. This is so cool. Thank you so much for coming on and chatting with me. That's the end of the podcast. But again, once it's live, Abby will send over a link to everything. I'll tag you on social media and what you're doing is literally so cool. I am obsessed with it. I think it's so creative and so smart, and.

Just amazing. So thank you for everything. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Yeah, of course. We'll stay in touch if you're ever in Los Angeles. I know you're only in the Bay Area, so Yeah, I used to live in LA, so Oh yeah. But yeah, I lived in Santa Monica. Okay. I'm in Culver City, so Oh, cool.

Yeah, very close by. I love it there. I love Southern California. When you moved to the Bay Area. I first moved back to, I'm from St. Louis, Missouri, so I moved back there and then we moved to the Bay Area in 2020, which is Oh, okay. Yeah. In the midst of the pandemic. Yeah. That's when I moved to Los Angeles.

So in 2020 Oh my gosh. In 2020. Not a fun time to move there. No, and I was in downtown Los Angeles at the time and it was the worst Yeah. Have ever seen. I had a friend who was living there and she literally just got in her car and drove back to St. Louis. 'cause she was like, it was so depressing. Like you couldn't Yeah.

Go outside. That's literally the day before I moved some. My dad's like college friend or something, had called him and was like, Hey, I saw on Facebook that like your daughter's moving to Los Angeles. And basically gave him an entire rundown of like how downtown LA was at the time. And my dad was like, you're not going.

And I was like, my flight's booked for tomorrow. I'm going, am going actually. But it really scared him. And then I lived there. I lived in downtown for three years and I in. Three different apartments and one of them was right above Skid Row at one point and I was living there for three months. 'cause it was so bad.

Yeah, that's awful. That's so depressing. But now I feel like I can live anywhere. Yeah, anywhere. Rock bottom. Only up from really. Optimistic way of looking at it. Yeah. I think I have a lot of fun stories to tell now that I don't live there anymore. Yeah. At the time it was scary. Now it's oh, that was so funny.

Ha. Yeah. That is funny. Thank you so much again, and I hope we'll speak soon and have a great rest of your day. All right, you too. Thank you. Bye bye. 

That's it for this week's episode of the Lexi Show Fashion. That gives a damn big thanks to Claire Ring for showing us what circular design looks like in action. Whether it's fashion or everyday products, this is how sustainability should work.

If this conversation resonated with you, subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Leave a review and share this with someone who needs to hear it he lexie silverstein.com For more content on sustainable style and conscious consumption, and follow me on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube at Lexie Silverstein.

That's LEXY, silver like the color, S-T-E-I-N. Remember to live a good life and look [00:23:00] fucking good at doing it, and demand better from brands in your closet and everywhere else. See you next week.