Lend Me Your Eyes: Glasses Recycling This Saturday

 via drburt.com

Ah, recycling: it's always there to make us feel environmentally responsible while the world burns and spawns killer hurricanes. Well, what better place than Park Slope for symbolic, liberal gestures? Good news, Slopers: now you can recycle your specs, too, thanks to Slope glasses hut, Moral Eyes. And it will actually do more than assuage your environmental guilt -- old specs will go to those who can't afford new ones.

On Saturday, the shop launches its campaign to collect some of the thousands of glasses thrown out every year. Stop improving the eyesight of landfill rats and dump your old pair at recycling bins at two locations, both early registration spots for the Prospect Park Run4Kiva 5K race:

* JackRabbit Union Square, 11am-5pm

* JackRabbit Park Slope, 3pm-5pm

Already do-gooders, MoralEyes currently donates a pair of glasses to its nonprofit arm New Eyes for the Needy for every pair a customer buys a pair. That amounts to a donation of over $150,000 every year -- and a lot more people able to see you clearly when you're in the crosswalk. So be thankful. Recycled specs will go to the same cause, and help mend eyes in developing nations.

After Saturday, the recycling program continues at the Run4Kiva registration Sunday, Aug. 14, starting at 8:30am at the Knights of Columbus (1511 10th Ave., off Prospect Park SW) and then at the NY International Gift Fair at Pier 92, Aug. 13-18. (The MoralEyes folks will set up shop at booth #33040).

Oh, and in case the feel-good aspect wasn't enough, spec donors get a chance to win an iPad2, from which to tweet about how you helped a person in need -- and about how you won an iPad 2. Every donation gets a raffle ticket. Winners get announced via MoralEyes' facebook and twitter pages on Thursday, Aug. 18.