CA, NY Moving Towards Banning Skin Products Containing Microbeads

[hatrack]

Scrubbing dead skin cells off your face and tartar off your teeth trashes the environment if it’s not done right. The right way to do it is with facial scrubs, shampoo, and toothpaste that do not contain microbeads. The microscopic balls of hard plastic flow down drains and pass through wastewater treatment plants, ending up in rivers, lakes, and oceans, where they enter the food chain.

Finding microbead-free products isn’t easy right now — you have to read ingredient lists and steer clear of products that contain “polyethylene” or “polypropylene.” Natural alternatives include ground almonds, oatmeal, and pumice.

But if lawmakers in California and New York get their ways, the microbead-loaded varieties will become nearly impossible to purchase in two of the most populous states in the country.

EDIT

Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, and Colgate-Palmolive have all made recent commitments to start phasing microbeads out of their products. “We are discontinuing our limited use of micro plastic beads as scrub materials in personal care products as soon as alternatives are qualified,” a Procter & Gamble spokeswoman told the L.A. Times. The new legislative pressure should help ensure that these corporate giants make good on their pledges to scrub the microplastics out of their cleansing products.

EDIT/END

http://grist.org/news/new-york-california-move-to-ban-beauty-products-containing-microbeads/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed

[friendly_iconoclast]

1. Good. Oatmeal, corn and rice bran have been used as facial scrubs for years...

...and are widely available

[awoke_in_2003]

3. When I shave, I use shaving soap...

and a shaving brush (oh, and I shave with a straight razor). When finished shaving, I wash the rest of my face with the remaining lather, scrub my face with a course wash cloth, then rinse. No need for fancy, and harmful, microbeads. Since I have been doing this, my skin has become very smooth. As to shaving soaps, I stick with the stuff made with beef tallow, like DR Harris and Speick. A lot of shaving soaps (and soaps in general) are made with palm oil. I avoid these, due to the environmental impact of palm oil production.

[friendly_iconoclast]

5. Try Kiss My Face, it's made with olive oil. I use it

[awoke_in_2003]

6. I have tried six shaving soaps...

made with olive oil. Compared to tallow, they have all been severely disappointing.

[hunter]

7. When I shave... nope. I don't.

This plastic micro-bead stuff? Who thought that up?

There seems to be another Thomas Midgley, Jr. among us, inventor of leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons.

Talk about some rotten luck...

[angstlessk]

2. What about the rest of the US???

[caraher]

4. They might bring us along

What can happen is that when a few big markets force a reformulation, the companies might just decide to change the product everywhere. It really comes down to the economics of having two versions of the "same" product - it could break either way depending on the details and what they decide the cost to their image might be if they continue to sell the less eco-friendly version.