Over a decade ago, Aldo Zucaro joined CooperVision working on commercial strategy before moving into market research, and then finally into the position of Senior Director of Corporate Responsibilities at Cooper Companies, with oversight of sustainability. “My time with CooperVision and Cooper Companies has been a natural evolution of looking after, growing and developing new opportunities—first from product growth to new opportunities within the industry and market, to today and the emerging, but quickly growing area of sustainability,” said Aldo.

One of Cooper Companies’ core values is doing the right thing—something that Aldo is passionate about. “I want all of us to feel good about the company we work for, and I believe our customers and their patients want to feel good about the company they do business with.” For Aldo, this means CooperVision is a company that not only makes a great product and solves vision challenges but is also elevated in some non-traditional ways. He adds, “I get excited thinking about how we can create the best contact lenses for our customers and leave the smallest footprint possible. As a company, we need to be doing what’s right and what’s best for people and planet.”

A Sustainability Champion and Enthusiast

Unlike Paul Riggs, Carol Herring and the many functional experts at CooperVision who lead the technical discussions and work to implement specific sustainability initiatives and make them a reality, Aldo serves as CooperVision’s sustainability champion. With a bird’s eye view of sustainability, Aldo has been instrumental in identifying and uncovering new sustainability opportunities and strategies that help to decrease CooperVision’s footprint, including how to minimize manufacturing waste and make our products in a better way. But as a sustainability enthusiast at CooperVision, Aldo does more than advocate for new initiatives—he encourages and motivates his colleagues to embrace sustainability in the workplace. 

 
“Our employees believe in doing the right thing—and that includes being sustainable,” said Aldo. “My role is to grow and develop new sustainability initiatives, but also to inspire and nurture a passion for sustainability at CooperVision, including challenging our leadership and employees to be better at helping people and planet.”

Uncovering Sustainability Opportunities

In addition to working to empower CooperVision employees to think, work, and advocate for doing better for people and planet, Aldo has identified two clear opportunities for sustainability at CooperVision—the first being uncovering ways to reduce waste.

Aldo’s sustainability initiatives have encouraged employees to think differently about waste, including the operations teams and their implementation of waste reduction efforts such as changing pallet configurations, removing shrink plastic, and adding reusable totes. These measures have helped result in six CooperVision manufacturing and distribution sites around the world having received Zero Waste Facility Certification from SCS Global Services (SCS), an international leader in third-party environmental and sustainability certifications.* 1 The certification, which demonstrates the degree to which operations prevent or divert waste from landfills, was attained by the company’s facilities in Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico; Alajuela, Costa Rica; Delta Park and Mount Park in the U.K.; and Scottsville and West Henrietta, N.Y.* 1

“Today, around 90% of non-hazardous waste is recycled/reused from CooperVision’s manufacturing sites,”2 said Aldo. “It’s an amazing achievement when you consider the scale of our operations, producing and shipping billions of contact lenses a year!”

The Zero Waste Facility Certification reflects the latest milestone in CooperVision’s environmental initiatives focused on conserving energy; reducing, reusing, and recycling resources; and empowering people within the company and the communities in which it operates. CooperVision’s facilities in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Scottsville, and West Henrietta also hold prestigious LEED® certifications, and Mount Park a BREEAM® “Excellent” rating.† 3

The second sustainability opportunity Aldo sees is around plastics. He acknowledges that without plastics, it would be virtually impossible to create a comfortable, efficacious contact lens. “Plastics are ideal for our application. They are a brilliant material that can be made to protect, enhance and transmit oxygen.”

However, he pushes himself and his colleagues to re-imagine how the company’s plastics can be repurposed. “On average, individuals wear contact lenses anywhere from nine to 12 hours per day and for many, at the end of that day they are tossed out. So, I feel a sense of responsibility for finding a second use for all of the plastics used in our products beyond their lifespan. At CooperVision we manufacture incredible products, and my role is making sure we’re thoughtful about the material we use, so they perform brilliantly as contact lenses and brilliantly in any second use.”

While Aldo continues to search for a new life for spent contact lenses and packaging, he has already been instrumental in helping to offset a portion of CooperVision's plastic footprint and establishing the first plastic neutral contact lens initiative, in partnership with Plastic Bank.

Through our plastic neutrality partnership, CooperVision funds the collection and recycling of ocean-bound plastic equivalent to the weight of plastic used across the company’s range of participating soft contact lenses, including the lenses themselves, blisters, and packaging components.‡ 4 To date, the initiative has prevented the equivalent of 482.1 million plastic bottles from entering the oceans.§ 5

“The Plastic Bank partnership goes beyond plastic bottle collection,” said Aldo. “We’ve been able to monetize our sustainability action and provide benefits to Plastic Bank collection members that include enabling some families to educate their children. Our new vision care program with Plastic Bank has been providing, in some cases, first ever vision screenings to collection members,6 as well as glasses that meet vision care needs. This partnership demonstrates how you can do the right thing and impact people and planet at the same time.”

A Cooper Vision of Sustainability

“What I do is make what we do in sustainability tangible—and connected—to our customers, their patients, and to CooperCompanies employees,” explained Aldo. “For me, our sustainability goals aren’t just about the numbers—it’s about envisioning the kind of company we could be and always wondering how we can make things better—our products, and for people and planet. I want people to look at CooperVision and think, what an amazing company to be able to make billions of contact lenses a year and not leave a wake behind. To think that we leave a giant handprint on everything and everyone we’ve touched—and not a giant footprint.”