This New Socially Conscious Brand Is Making Chic Eyewear From Flint’s Leftover Water Bottles
In 2016, nearly two years after people in Flint, Michigan started to complain about nasty water coming out of their taps, the federal government acknowledged it had a crisis on its hands and declared a state of emergency. Detroit native Ali Rose VanOverbeke was one of many volunteers to fan out across the city, working with the American Red Cross to lug cases of bottled water door-to-door.
As VanOverbeke became more involved with the Flint community, she enlisted her friend and fellow Parsons graduate Jack Burns to join her. The duo kept thinking about how they could employ their design backgrounds to help, while most importantly asking people what they needed. The answer was almost always the same: jobs. “Jack and I had no background in business,” VanOverbeke says with a laugh. “So we were like, ‘Okay, we need to start a business. We need to figure out how to start a business.’ ”
The experience was the genesis of Genusee, a company transforming empty plastic water bottles—the environmental hangover of the ongoing crisis—into eyewear. The first style, the Roeper, is a unisex, vintage-inspired round frame that has been “democratically designed,” as the duo put it, to suit a range of face shapes and sizes. Each pair is made from post-consumer plastic pellets, which are melted down and molded into frames. Each purchase, which includes frames, case, and polishing bag (made of 50 percent recycled content), recycles 15 bottles. The brand embodies the concept of upcycling, where discarded objects are refashioned into items of higher value and purpose; it’s an ethos that no doubt appeals to fans of the socially conscious buy-one-give-one model of labels like Toms and Warby Parker. “People want to invest in brands that are aligned with their personal values,” VanOverbeke explains. “I think it’s no longer acceptable, or even a sustainable business model, to just be focused on capital and profits.”
Genusee (a riff on Genesee, the county where Flint is located) recently surpassed its Kickstarter goal of $50,000, raising just under $75,000 in a month. The majority of the money will go into setting up local production of the glasses, providing 15 jobs within an 80-mile radius of the city. “It was extremely important for us to be as close to, and within, Flint as possible,” Burns explains. The longer-term vision is to set up a vertically integrated facility where everything can be done in one place, offering a range of different jobs along the way.
Last month Michigan stopped distributing free bottled water to residents, declaring Flint’s water safe to drink. But VanOverbeke, from her position at the front lines, says that the crisis rolls on. “If you speak to community members and ask them, ‘What’s your water like when you turn the tap on?’ people are showing you that it comes out looking like apple juice,” she says. “That’s not clean water.” Given that the community went through more than 20 million bottles a day at the height of the water crisis, there’s still plenty of plastic left to reuse. As VanOverbeke prepares to move from New York back to Michigan this week, she’s doubling down on her commitment to Flint. “We are in it for the long haul,” she says.
Preorder a pair of Roeper frames in Classic Black or Crystal Fog via Genusee’s Indiegogo campaign for $99 (regular price $129).
