The Little Things Add Up! Contact Solution??

I wear contacts, in fact I just got another years supply not that long ago that should do me for awhile, but one thing that I never really noticed before but do you realize how expensive saline solution is? It is! $14.99 for two bottles unless you get it on sale and it lasts what.. maybe 2 months if you wear your contacts regularly. There’s not much we can do about that as we need the contact solution in order for them to remain fresh and good in our peepers.

However, for you contact wearers out there, have you ever purchased a lens case or noticed that the ones that come with the cases or you get with your contacts are getting larger? Adam Zuckerman did – and started doing some math on it, the results were quite surprising as I read at his post on the subject:

• The increase in case size from the smallest (4.5mL) to the largest (13 mL) is ~189%!
• This increase may account for ~$90 per year in additional solution purchases, per person.
• As an approximate 18,000,000 Americans wear soft lenses, this increase could (at its most severe) amount to ~$1,600,000,000 in unnecessary solution purchases.
• This tally equates 162,000,000 bottles of 12 ounce solution.  (That’s a lot of trash!)

You know what the sad part was? I own a bunch of the ones that actually were the WORST for filling up.. and it’s easy to figure out – the more you fill them up – the more you’re going to spend on contact solution!

A few tips to reduce the amount we use when filling up the contact cases??

1. the little lines inside your contact case, just fill it up to the top of those, don’t fill it up all the way. That’s what those lines are for, it’s a "fill to here" line.
2. don’t boil the cases when replacing, but do so regularly – the cases originally come with a little layer of stuff that helps keep bacteria from growing in the case, over time it wears out and if you boil the case it completely gets rid of it, making the case a breeding ground for nastiness.
3. the ones that used the least amount of lens solution? Found here at amazon.com – get something similar likely in on sale at a dollar store or something
4. use the $90 or so on average you’ll save during the year and buy some new camera gear like a new Xlogic VD628 Camera Tripod which will come in handy on your next photo shoot. Ok, well maybe that tip is just for me.

Anyhow some food for thought and I wanted to pass along that tip.