How Claire Ring turns recycled pill bottles into stylish sunglasses

Each week, One Earth is proud to feature a Climate Hero from around the globe who is working to create a world where humanity and nature can thrive together.

Recently, we spoke with Claire Ring, founder of Cocoplum, to learn how she turned single-use plastic waste into a circular eyewear brand.

Claire Ring grew up in a bustling household in St. Louis, Missouri, where sustainability took root in subtle, memorable moments. Her mom, well ahead of the curve, opted for paper grocery bags over plastic ones. This was an inconvenience that stuck with Claire, as the paper bags didn't come with handles, especially when unloading groceries for a family of eight. 

She recalls being taught the difference between biodegradable and non-biodegradable items, like why you should never spit out your gum. “Little things like that,” Claire says, “shaped how I see waste and responsibility today.”

These small lessons would one day fuel a big idea.

A new city, a new baby, and a bold idea

Claire moved from St. Louis to the Bay Area with her husband and their eight-week-old daughter—just as the world was deep in lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. With nowhere to go and a newborn in tow, Claire found herself at home around the clock. What stood out most was the sheer volume of plastic piling up in her recycling bin.

Curiosity turned into concern, and concern into action. “I didn’t know much about recycling then, but I knew enough to suspect that most of it probably wasn’t actually being recycled.” That realization led Claire down a rabbit hole into the broken systems of plastic waste management. In the process, she discovered Precious Plastic, an open-source project empowering individuals to recycle plastic on a small scale. Inspired, she decided: if the system isn’t working, I’ll start my own.

A colorful problem with a circular solution

While sourcing plastic to experiment with, Claire stumbled upon shredded pill bottles being sold online. They worked beautifully in her tests—but more importantly, they were everywhere. “They’re common, difficult to avoid, and rarely accepted by curbside recycling programs,” she explains. That trifecta made them the perfect material for a new experiment.

The process she developed is deceptively simple: collect, clean, shred, melt, and mold. Using injection molding, Claire shapes the melted plastic—made up of about 97% pill bottles and 3% colorant—into bold, stylish sunglasses. And when a pair of shades reaches the end of its life? Customers can send them back to be recycled all over again, earning a discount on their next pair.

Naming the brand after a beachside shrub 

Claire spent six months struggling to name her new venture, “changing it every week.” Eventually, she turned to nature for inspiration and discovered the cocoplum, a plant that grows on tropical beaches. It was a perfect fit. The name evoked sunshine, sand, and sustainability. Cocoplum was born.

Building an ethical brand from scratch 

Claire is the first to admit she dove into the deep end without a map. “I didn’t know anything about manufacturing, recycling, or eyewear design,” she says. Her early vision of melting plastic in her garage quickly collided with reality. Injection molding, it turns out, is complex and finicky. She pivoted to work with a professional manufacturer using more sophisticated equipment, but the spirit of scrappy innovation never left.

A vision for sustainable style and shifting an entire industry

Claire’s goal for Cocoplum is ambitious but grounded: make it a go-to brand for people seeking stylish, sustainable eyewear. She hopes to inspire other companies to rethink their reliance on virgin plastic by proving that recycled materials can be just as functional and beautiful.

“I want Cocoplum to show that recycled materials work—and that they can look really good doing it. This is just one small piece of what’s possible.”

Through partnerships with community collection sites, and thanks to individuals who mail in their used bottles, Cocoplum is helping hundreds of people keep pill bottles out of landfills.

Creating a circular alternative to fast fashion

From production to disposal, the fashion industry is one of the most wasteful on the planet; an estimated 40% of items produced each year go unsold. Most sunglasses today are designed for low-cost, short-term use, contributing to pollution and overflowing landfills.

Claire Ring is offering a different path. Her work aligns with Recycle & Reuse —one of the 76 climate solutions in One Earth’s Solutions Framework under the pillar of Regenerative Agriculture—which promotes slow fashion principles like repairing, repurposing, and upcycling materials to counter the waste and pollution of fast fashion.

In a world hooked on convenience and disposability, Cocoplum is a refreshing signal of what's to come: thoughtful design that reimagines waste as a resource.