Eco-friendly Beauty: Why you should avoid beauty products with microbeads?
Microbeads might seemingly be exfoliating our skin but are posing a bigger threat to the environment. We round up the best microbead-free cleansers to try for refreshed skin.
Microbeads have been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons lately. If you are unsure about how they look, think of them as the ‘blue bobbles’ often found in face scrubs. Microbeads are plastic microspheres and are often used in beauty products such as exfoliating face/ body scrubs and toothpaste.
They have been in the news lately due to the serious pollution threat they’re causing to oceans. Once you are done washing your face with these microbead-filled face scrubs, the beads travel down the waterways only to land up in the environment because they can’t be degraded. The beads then absorb the surrounding toxin only to infect the animals that swallow them such as fishes.
All hope is not lost yet though. States such as California in the United States have just passed laws to phase out exfoliating microbeads by 2020. This means that products such as toothpaste, scrubs and soaps with microbeads will be prohibited for sale.
That is great news for us consumers as we will be able to do our part in the drive towards eco-friendliness. Now to help you get started on a better routine, head over to our gallery up top for a roundup of exfoliating face scrubs without the harmful beads.
Perin Sidhu
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