Facewash is one of those beauty products we just can't live without, and who can resist the pleasant scraping sensation of a facial scrub? Unfortunately, however, unless you are buying a scrub with an all natural scrubbing agent (like crushed appricot pit) that will decompose over time, chances are that your scrub is full of plastic microbeads. What are those? Literally tiny pieces of plastic. That's it.
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| "Microbeads", Credit |
So while plastic is not inherently bad for the skin in such small exposures (as far as I know), it turns out that washing all those tiny plastic particles down the drain and out into the closest lake or sea is extremely bad for the environment. Why? Plastic in our seas is a huge issue. The bigger, colorful pieces look like fish or other food that sea birds, turtles, and fish normally eat. These animals will fill up on plastic and actually starve to death. Smaller pieces of plastic are another issue, as it takes 500-1,000 years to degrade, they simply become this goopy plastic solution that floats on top of the ocean and attracts more debris, which creates ocean gyres. Similar disasters can occur in lakes too.
For this reason, Illinois is out to stop micro-plastic bead pollution. This summer, Governer Pat Quinn and other lawmakers voted to ban soaps, scrubs, washes, or toothpastes with the plastic beads. This ban will help to alleviate and eliminate plastic pollution in the Great Lakes.
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| Those are the amounts of plastic you put down the drain per bottle of wash, Credit |
Like the plastic water bottle ban in San Francisco, this ban will gradually be put in place and only taking full effect by 2018. Some companies such as Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, and L'Oreal are already phasing out microbeads by themselves to beat the ban.
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