Making good citizens

2.5 years ago, Sydney dad Nik Robinson took a massive gamble and started a plastic recycling idea with his two kids, Harry and Archie, and successfully invented a way to turn a discarded 600ml single-use plastic bottle into a pair of sunglasses. Yep, 1 bottle = 1 pair of sunnies. No screws, no metal parts, just one recycled bottle (except the lenses) aptly named Good Citizens! And what’s even cooler is they also make the cases and cleaning cloths out of 100% recycled bottle plastic too which is all processed in Australia. Plus the frames are made right here in Sydney. We chat to Nik about this awesome adventure and what it means to have his kids involved

box and use the money we saved to pull plastic

First of all, tell us a little bit about you, your wife and the kids.

My wife, Jocelyne, and I both grew up in the UK but we’ve both been here for 20 odd years so we feel very at home in Australia now. We live in Sydney with our two boys aged eight and nine. My wife has a public relations background and I’ve had a few careers - radio presenter, creative director and head of content for an entertainment company. Before this, neither of us had any experience in retail, manufacturing, recycling, plastic polymers or creating transparent supply chains, so it’s been a steep learning curve.

How did the idea for making recycled glasses come about?

about buying a bottle in the first place.

The kids were learning about plastic waste at school and they came home upset that the world was drowning in plastic waste. As a family we’d often talk about the issue and wondered what could we do to help.

After we agreed that we’d do something, I spent every day for a solid four months researching. Plastic bottles are an incredible menace when discarded thoughtlessly. Over 500 billion are made every year and only 7-9% are recycled; the rest end up in landfill and the ocean.

weighed it and explored products we thought could be made from that bottle. Glasses won. The plastic of one 600ml bottle makes two arms, the frame front and the hinges.

Tell us about the kids involvement and what it means to them.

The kids have been brilliant at keeping things simple. We adults can over complicate everything. We scribbled down four guiding principles. Every decision gets run through the filter of these principles together with our very simple purpose - to untrash the planet. We ask ourselves, “Will this action untrash the planet quicker?” If so, it’s usually a yes. For example, when we designed the dispatch box for the glasses, we designed two. One was simple and cost 65c, the other was a fancier one that cost $2.80. The kids decided to go with the simple waste out of the ocean. We call it the unfancy box.

What sort of impact has Good Citizens had so far on the environment?

So far, we’ve prevented over 5,000 bottles from going to landfill and we’ve pulled 1.35 tons of plastic off beaches and out of the ocean. Our story has been told in publications around the world and we estimate over 16 million people have seen it. This starts a conversation about how trash can be turned into something good and stylish and it makes people think twice We took a 600ml PET bottle and studied it,

The glasses are designed to last forever by offering replacement parts. How does this work?

The design of the hinge makes the glasses modular which means every frame part can be replaced and fixed in seconds. For the first year we’ll replace any part for free (apart from the lenses) and we’ll recycle the old parts.

We never set out to make sunglasses, we set out to untrash the planet. Sunglasses are just the beginning. That said, we have so many ideas we’d like to execute in the eyewear space before we develop more products. So, watch this space!

The boys specifically wanted a business that meant you spend more time together. But when it’s not business time where would we find you hanging out as a family on the weekend?

To be honest, the business has consumed a lot of our time as a family. When other kids were being homeschooled in lockdown, ours were helping with assembly and dispatch, so it has felt like a 24/7 idea. We try to make it fun though. We are a very normal and rather boring family most of the time! On the weekend you’ll usually find us at the boys’ soccer games or exploring the parks and beaches around us.

What was your biggest challenge starting with Good Citizens?

Something like this had never been done before to this level so we faced many challenges. Keeping to 100% recycled was particularly tricky especially when everyone was advising us to add another material to make it work. But we were determined to stick with 100%.

Finding a manufacturer in Sydney that was up for the challenge. Keeping mentally strong when we faced issues every day was really hard. I’ll be honest, I cried a number of times from the sheer stress of it all.

Biggest reward?

We’ve been lucky as there have been a few. Selfridges in London giving us an entire window next to Prada and winning a Best in Class and a Gold at the Good Design Awards are definitely up there. But seeing people walking around in our sunnies and receiving emails from customers telling us how good they feel walking around in our glasses, nothing beats that!

Favourite thing about being a dad?

I get to influence how my kids see the world and teach them fun honest lessons.

And finally, where can we grab ourselves some Good Citizens?