What happens to those 3-D glasses after 'Avatar'?

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By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

Laid end-to-end, the 3-D glasses worn by avid Avatar-goers since the
blockbuster movie opened 46 days ago would reach from Los Angeles to
Angmagssalik, Greenland - about 3,987 miles.

That's a whole lot of plastic. With about 75% of people who see Avatar
seeing it in 3-D, it works out to about 42.1 million pairs of glasses worn,
or 935,834 a day.

Four companies provide 3-D systems for showing the wildly popular sci-fi
epic in the USA: Dolby Laboratories, IMAX, Real-D and XpanD.

Each has a recycling program in place, for hygiene and to keep what would
otherwise be a mountain of plastic out of landfill.

IMAX, which has about 2% of the 3-D screens showing Avatar, says its glasses
can be washed up to 500 times. "When we put them through our
glasses-cleaning machine, they come out as clean and sterile as they come
out of a dishwasher in a restaurant," says Brian Bonnick, the Canadian
company's vice president of technology.

Dolby and XpanD are the next-largest in terms of screens, though exact
numbers are hard to come by. Dolby's glasses are also reusable. Each gives
theater owners instructions on how to clean its reusable specs.

"We have glasses that have been used and washed thousands of times without
degradation," says director of marketing Page Huan. "There's no need to
throw them away. They're very environmentally friendly." She says Dolby
suggests exhibitors simply buy a commercial dishwasher and clean them with
soap and high heat.

XpanD's glasses also are built tough to be washed, though the company's
Michael Williams suggests keeping the dishwater temperature "under 120
degrees or you might have a little glob of plastic" come out at the end of
the wash cycle.

The glasses, which require batteries and cost about $50 each, have built-in
security strips, Williams says. Theater owners can get rollable security
barriers that beep if patrons forget to return them.
Real-D has the lion's share of 3-D projection systems in the USA, accounting
for at least 700,000 3-D glasses used a day. It distributes cardboard
containers so movie-goers can recycle their glasses.

According to Real-D's Rick Heineman, the glasses are shipped to a cleaning
facility near Los Angeles, where they're sanitized, checked for defects,
repackaged and shipped out.

Moore Theaters in Otsego, Mich., has done away with recycling altogether. It
sells a plastic reusable bucket for popcorn that patrons fill themselves and
charges $3 for 3-D glasses patrons keep, says owner Carol Moore. "By this
weekend, we had 22% coming back with glasses. Most of the time that means
they're returning to see the movie or they're giving them to friends."