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SUNGLASSES AND ACCESSORIES FROM UPCYCLED FLIP FLOPS - THE FLIPYARN STORY
Parkville’s fun and fashionable way to tackle the flip flop waste crisis

Parkville, the eco-friendly manufacturer of sustainable wooden eyewear, homeware and luxury hairbrushes, is very proud and excited to announce the launch of FlipYarn - a pioneering recycling and upcycling program to collect discarded flip flops, the world’s most popular but non-degradable footwear worn by some 3 billion people around the world, and create a range of sunglasses and accessories.

Flip flop waste has become a major ecological problem because it is polluting our oceans & beaches, killing marine life and obstructing vital breeding grounds.

We collect and recycle discarded flip flops in partnership with leading beach clean-up and waste collection organisations in Sri Lanka where our Parkville zero-waste factory is located. We then upcycle them into innovative, fun and colourful FlipYarn products such as high grade affordable sunglasses, accessories and key rings - making us the first people in the world to make sunglasses from recycled flip flops!

Parkville will shortly be launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise capital for investment in additional machinery and expansion of our team dedicated to FlipYarn.

Parkville is an eco-friendly sustainable eyewear, homeware, haircare and accessories brand started four years ago by two brothers from London to address the environmental plastics crisis by working solely with locally sourced sustainable wood & materials. We proudly make all of our products in our own zero-waste factory in Colombo, Sri Lanka, a country known for its beautiful ecology, skilled workforce, wonderful culture and extremely welcoming people.

We started out with the manufacture and sale of high grade wooden sunglasses in response to the ecological threat of the hundreds of millions of largely plastic sunglasses sold every year around the world that are never recycled and can never biodegrade. From there we developed a range of affordable high quality wooden furniture and homeware accessories as well as teaming up with the Valentino Salon in London to develop a range of unique eco-friendly wooden hair brushes and other haircare products.

All our wood is ethically sourced and for every product sold we plant a tree in partnership with the Trees for the Future [and the Rainforest Protectors] organization[s]. We incentivise recycling of discarded flip flops by paying our collection partners for those we collect from them, thus contributing to the socio-economic wellbeing of directly affected communities.

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