EVOLVE Business and Professional Magazine November 2019 | Page 36

discarded fishing nets. The Untangle Our Oceans initiative that
spawned the collection identifies discarded fishing nets as the most
harmful type of plastic ocean pollution, and the program works
with partners such as Bureo to not only support collecting and
recycling of that waste, but to re-educate and resupply fishermen
with more sustainable alternatives to the conventional nets that
scrape ocean floors, killing coral reefs and entangling valuable
ocean life. Through such efforts, Costa has “recycled over 9 tons of
polycarbonate scrap from our manufacturing process” in the last
year, according to McMeniman.
After sourcing the materials, Costa’s sunglasses are assembled
by hand in their Daytona Beach facility, and are designed and
built to last. But if anything does break, Costa offers mail-in repair
services, and if the item ever does reach the end of its usefulness,
most of the materials it’s made from can be upcycled into other
products, according to McMeniman. Reducing or eliminating the
downstream environmental costs of waste and replacement for their
own product is part of the kind of cradle-to-grave responsibility
Costa was born for.
While saving the oceans is inextricably woven into Costa’s
product and process, “it may not always be the main message
every single time you see a piece of advertising from Costa,” says
McMeniman. Through the website and other messaging materials,
the information is readily available for those who are interested
in learning more, and that pool of consumers and stakeholders is
Conservation Village
matter of fact, across the board plastics reduction through the Kick
Plastics Initiative is currently one of Costa’s biggest sustainability
efforts, involving reducing single-use plastics, such as water bottles,
in their day-to-day operations and finding alternatives to using
plastics in packaging and production, to the Untangled Collection,
last year’s revolutionary new line of sunglasses made from
Daytona Automall | 1450 N. Tomoka Farms Rd
Daytona Beach, FL | 386.274.0571
www.DaytonaDodge.com
| 36 | EVOLVE BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE
growing. McMeniman says that 90% of millennials and Gen Z-ers
“will tell you that all things being equal, they’re going to choose the
brand that has a more of a sustainable conscious eye.” He has found
that the sustainable angle isn’t lost among retail partners, either, and
that many of them “believe in the same kinds of things we believe
in,” he says. “We believe in doing the right thing, and when you do
the right thing, it makes it almost impossible to refute.”