Beauty and the biodiversity: what are you washing down the drain?

Today I decided to do a little detective work into cleaning products found around my flat. As a student finding environmentally responsible products is pretty much impossible. From toothpastes to facial cleansers you might be surprised to find out that the sparkly glitters and 'microbeads' in many of the everyday products we use are in fact microplastic and, I'm afraid to say, end up in our beautiful oceans. 

You may think, nay its not too bad, there are sewage treatment facilities that clean our dirty water and the ocean is indeed a pretty huge place. 

Think again....

Recent scientific papers have shown that an increasing amount of marine organisms, such as crustaceans, plankton, filter-feeding molluscs to fish and even seabirds! 

This is because the micro plastics found within beauty products, less than 1mm in diameter, cannot be filtered out during water treatment processes. And with over 300,000 microbeads found in your average tube of facial wash you can imagine the environmental damage that cumulative consumer use could cause. 

These particles can affect a greater number of organisms than larger pieces of plastic, making them even more dangerous. They can block the digestion tract of fish species,

But they can also absorb harmful chemicals effectively turning them into toxic pills 

They can also stay within the marine environment for over 50 years before plastic degradation can occur. 

Initiatives such as the 5gyres and campaign are currently trying to raise public awareness of the issue by sending around a petition to put pressure on the beauty industry into becoming more environmentally responsible (get !INVOLVED! by clicking the link):

 “…I support the elimination of plastic polyethylene micro-beads in all personal care products and urge Procter & Gamble to take the environmentally responsible action of removing them from their products by no later than January 1st, 2015.”

If you don't want to ditch that face scrub just yet, heres a link to a range of totally natural products that will do an even better job than chemical and plastic based exfoliants. Environmental goddesses/ gods rejoice!