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I know this article is about more than just microbeads, but the thing that always angers me the most about this issue is that the people who decided to use them

• wyager 10y ago
  > Microbeads didn't even contribute to the efficacy of the the product, Increasing the coarseness of soaps absolutely helps their efficacy, especially for heavier oil and grime. There may be more environmentally friendly ways to do it, but microbeads were certainly useful in many cases.
  • mirimir 10y ago
    In my experience, ground apricot pits work just as well.
    • pmyjavec 10y ago
      Yup or sand :)
      • mirimir 10y ago
        Or pumice ;) I was thinking of acne cleanser.
        • eutectic 10y ago
          Using abrasives in acne products probably does more harm than good by irritating the sling and disrupting the acid mantle.
          • mirimir 10y ago
            Please amplify. I've never seen those terms, and I suspect that I'm not alone in that :)
          • eutectic 10y ago
            *skin for sling. Oops.
        • majkinetor 10y ago
          Or fucking clay god damnit.
    • deleted 10y ago
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• riffraff 10y ago
  > must have known exactly what the long-term consequence was going to be why must? It seems possible they just assumed plastic would deteriorate quickly, or that they didn't think it would get into tissue, or that they just underestimated the consequences. Hanlon's razor might apply here.
  • astrodust 10y ago
    If there's one thing plastic doesn't do it's "deteriorate quickly". Anyone who works with plastic knows this. I've seen plastic bags stick around in trees for decades despite being exposed to wind, rain, and UV light for for twelve hours a day in the summer. There's a reason cities try and ban those things. A paper bag turns to mush within hours if it's wet. It's basically gone within weeks. Plastic beads. In stuff that goes down the drain. Brilliant.
    • ZenoArrow 10y ago
      From a user point of view, I doubt most people thought about it before the reports of ecological damage started rolling in. I know I didn't, I'd occasionally used products with microbeads in the past, it never crossed my mind to think about the damage those beads could cause, and even if it did I'd have assumed that it would've been easy enough to filter them out at a water treatment plant (I'm still not sure why this is a problem to be honest). Now that I know about the ecological damage they cause I won't be using them again, but I suspect plenty of people are still unaware of their impact. Hopefully they can continue to be banned. On a similar note, there are plenty of hazardous chemicals used in personal hygiene products, which is something that requires greater public awareness. There are some examples here (and even though the article suggests the EU has higher standards, hazardous chemicals can be found in products sold in the EU too): http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/04/20/soap-shampoo-toxic-chemicals.aspx http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/04/2...
    • riffraff 10y ago
      Microscopic plastic presumably does not work like plastic bags? TFA actually states that most microscopic plastic is not from microbeads but from larger things which have deteriorated.
• spodek 10y ago
  It's always somebody else who pollutes. Try this: for one week, don't have any food that requires any packaging. Don't just think about it. Do it. Then look back at how much packaging you needlessly go through. Or try not flying for one year. You won't die. In fact, you'll figure out ways to enjoy life without causing all that jet fuel to go into the atmosphere. Then look back at how much pollution you needlessly cause. People lived for tens of thousands of years without food packaging or flying while still making themselves happy. If you're going to call someone soulless and a dead-eyed scumbag, are you ready to look at your own behavior? Or is your pollution better than theirs? Do your excuses apply to you but theirs don't apply to theirs? I'll probably get downvoted because people don't like facing their pollution, only everyone else's. Theirs is always okay, or can't be avoided. Bottom line: if you want them to reduce their plastic, you can reduce yours.
  • kuschku 10y ago
    Well, and that’s why the German railway runs in many areas all trains with electricity from renewables, and why stores like http://original-unverpackt.de/ http://original-unverpackt.de/ are a thing (it’s a franchise-chain of stores that sell products without any packaging, getting quite popular in Germany nowadays).
  • oftenwrong 10y ago
    >Try this: for one week, don't have any food that requires any packaging. Don't just think about it. Do it. Then look back at how much packaging you needlessly go through. Coincidentally, I did try this a few years ago when I was testing how easily I could go "zero waste". I found I could buy very few foods without packaging. I could buy produce with minimal packaging - just rubber bands, twist ties, and stickers - but produce is increasingly sold in plastic bubbles and bags, so the selection was limited. There was some room for choice here: many types of produce, like carrots, were available both loose and in plastic bags. I could buy the loose ones. Also, most people use the plastic produce bags, but I could just bring my produce up to the checkout counter without them . I have done that since. I thought I could buy meat and fish at the counter, and bring my own containers instead of using the plastic and paper wrapping they use, but I was informed that it would be against health codes for them to use anything I provided. Also, some stores do not have a meat counter- they sell all meat shrink-wrapped on plastic trays. At the very least, I thought I could use my own containers in the self-serve bulk dry goods section of some local stores, where you can get beans, oatmeal, rice, cereal, dried fruit, etc. Nope - also against the health codes. You can only use the flimsy plastic containers they provide. It occurred to me that I could bring back one of their containers, and they would never know it was used. However, the containers are not at all durable, so they would break during washing, and it was difficult to clean the channel of the lids. I heard that at one far-away health food store they allow you to use your own containers despite the health codes, but I have yet to go there. Worryingly, these sections of the store seem much less popular, and people tend to buy the pre-packaged versions because it's easier to just grab something off of the shelf. I would not be surprised if these sections are phased out in the near future. Basically, the way we sell food here makes it hard to avoid packaging. Although I live in an area with many people who (claim to) care about the environment, it seems like there is no way to stem the tide of our general preference for lots of packaging around food. In other areas people seem better about this. When I was in California I went to Berkeley Bowl, and, true to stereotype, I saw lots of packaging-free food, people bringing their own containers, and more locally-sourced food.
• coldtea 10y ago
  >What kind of soulless, dead-eyed scumbag do you have to be to wilfully introduce something so utterly pointless and utterly destructive just to sell more shampoo? A company executive that will get a million dollar or several as bonus. It's the same in the food industry (let's add crap to it so it's more colorful, more sugary, more addictive, more long lasting, and worse for the consumer's health to increase our profits), in the car industry (let's lie about our emissions, and save billions to the company), in the internet industry (from "dark patterns" to privacy violations, to bait and switch schemes), ...
• modzu 10y ago
  jus cuz this comment is near the top, ill mention the major contributors according to the article: "plastic bags, styrofoam takeout containers and plastic cutlery"
• djrogers 10y ago
  > the people who decided to use them in shampoos and body washes must have known exactly what the long-term consequence was going to be, but went ahead and did it anyway. It took years and years of use before people started finding evidence of microbead contamination and problems. And before that nobody was screaming about it. Why is it that the inventor "must" have been able to predict something nobody else did either?
  • dpark 10y ago
    I remember reading about microbeads years before they were an "established problem". It was pretty clear from the beginning that they would end up in the oceanic food supply. It was perhaps not obvious that they would manage to find their way into the flesh of fish, but it was plainly obvious that they would wash down the drain and end up in the oceans, that they would stay there for a very long time, and that they would be consumed by ocean life.
• acjohnson55 10y ago
  As someone who used a body wash with beads in it for several years, I was horrified when I learned those beads were plastic. I'd always just assumed they were designed to dissolve. Or something. I share your anger with the manufacturers, who obviously knew better.
  • cowpewter 10y ago
    There are some brands that use things like ground nut shells or stone fruit pits instead of plastic beads, if you like the scrubbiness but want to use a safe version.
• unicornporn 10y ago
  > What kind of soulless, dead-eyed scumbag do you have to be to wilfully introduce something so utterly pointless and utterly destructive just to sell more shampoo? If it's the cheaper solution, of course there's going to be someone trying to sell it. If it sells it will give the company an economic competitive advantage and other companies will be tempted to follow suite in order to keep up with the competition. Some other company will try to market a shampoo without the plastic beads, at a premium price. Most consumers wont have the money (or interest) to vote with their wallets and so plastic beads will continue to fill or oceans. Looks like capitalism at work to me.
  • malyk 10y ago
    And failing because virtually none of the externalities are built into the price. Society has to come in later and clean up the mess giving capital uncountable subsidies through future tax expenditures.
• erikpukinskis 10y ago
  You're assuming that they are aware of the dangers. I think that's incorrect. It's much safer to assume people making "obviously" bad decisions are getting exposed to a different narrative than you are, and making sensible decisions given what they've been exposed to.