Our Environmental Commitment
Icare is fully engaged in ambitious environmental and social goals, contributing to more sustainable business practices. We are strongly involved and committed to the local community by financially and logistically supporting NGOs based in Cambodia, starting from the village where the factory was originally located. The combination of these two projects provides Icare Group with full compensation for its carbon emissions, evaluated by a third-party UK company, making us one of the very rare carbon-neutral eyewear producers in the industry.
Charity and local communities
"Les Enfants de Klang Leu" is a Cambodian nonprofit charity organization that supports local kids by providing tutoring and school support, school amenities, and year-round day care, allowing parents to go to work and older kids to continue their studies. They also train the kids in hygiene, cooking, growing vegetables, and even house repairs after the wet season.
Our customers have also shown great support to the kids by supporting the charity either through direct financial contributions or by contributing a few cents per case bought. In return, they have been allowed to mention this support in their company communication and, for some, on their products in support of "Les Enfants de Klang Leu." It's a great way to justify your decision to supply frames from Cambodia to end customers, combining charity and company communication, but above all, supporting a great cause: helping promising and deserving Cambodian kids!
Carbon Neutral Project:
Being a Carbon Neutral Organization, Icare has offset all our CO2e emissions by supporting the Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project in Cambodia, where one of our factories is located.
The Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project (SCRP) is an initiative designed to promote climate change mitigation and adaptation, maintain biodiversity, and create alternative livelihoods under the United Nations scheme of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+).
The 445,339 ha SCRP encompasses parts of Southern Cardamom National Park and Tatai Wildlife Sanctuary and will protect a critical part of the Cardamom Mountains Rainforest Ecoregion - one of the 200 most important locations for biodiversity conservation on the planet.
The SCRP is part of the Indo-Burma Hotspot, one of the world's 34 biodiversity hotspots, and is a critical watershed for the Gulf of Thailand, with a mosaic of habitats from dense evergreen and pine forests on its ridge tops to lowland melaleuca wetlands, flooded grasslands, lakes, and coastal mangroves in its lowlands.
This mosaic of habitat supports at least 52 species of IUCN Threatened birds, mammals, and reptiles, including the Siamese crocodile and one of Cambodia's two viable populations of Asian elephant. The landscape has also been identified by the Royal Government of Cambodia as an opportunity for tiger reintroduction.
The SCRP's watershed is important for the fisheries of the Gulf of Thailand as it provides fresh water to the largest contiguous mangrove forest left in the Gulf, Peam Krasop Wildlife Sanctuary, which is a critical nursery for the region's fisheries. This area provides food for Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam and supports the regulation of climate for the Southeast Asian peninsula.
More specifically, the SCRP has 20 major waterways that feed 3,800 villages in over 6 provinces. The project will directly support the livelihoods of 21 villages in nine communes around the perimeter of the project area. Eight additional villages in 4 communes are eligible to receive educational scholarships. These communities represent approximately 3,957 families and 16,495 individuals.
