Learn how Argentine hemp glasses are made

By Ulises Roman Rodriguez from El Planteo

After working for a limited period under the name Gaia Eyewear, he began manufacturing hemp lenses in search of a sustainable product and an innovative project.

Sustainability was something that, since childhood, kept this graduate of the National University of La Plata (UNLP) awake when environmental care began to appear on the Argentine agenda.

In this search process, Percivale had in his favor the familiarity with the plant, having had contact with it and cultivated it.

"It was instantaneous, it came out of nowhere. At that time, I had the idea of making wooden lenses, but actually using wood ends up not being sustainable," he says from the Chanvre workshop, where El Planteo is received, in the city of Quilmes.

Beloved hemp

Seeing the hemp fibers hanging from his hands, he thought of glasses and in a second realized how he would make them.

"It was in 2012 and all the information I could find was in English or French, because they were only made in those places. So I started translating works, studying until I got the first model."

One of the biggest difficulties encountered in promoting the project was the raw material of the product, which is not produced in the country.

A first post-investigation stage was to cool with water and manually separate the fibers.

The next step was to discover that in some hardware stores he could get the fibers in a micro way, on a small scale.

But there was a moment when he needed to have access to the product on a larger scale and that's when he started researching how to import in large quantities and from where.

Then, countries like China, India, and Eastern Europe appeared on their radars.

The step-by-step of Chanvre's hemp glasses
The hemp fiber they import and wash arrives in one-kilogram packages, and each kilogram is divided into 200 grams.

With the raw material in hand, the process leading to the final product begins: the lenses.