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Some personal care products, such as shower gels, soaps, shampoo, facial scrubs and toothpastes, are formulated with plastic microbeads. The colorful particles, made usually from polyethylene (but sometimes from nylon, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate or polymethyl methacrylate), serve as abrasives and add visual appeal to the products. Unfortunately, they are small enough to pass through sewage treatment plants into waterways and oceans, where they can persist. In the aquatic environment, the microbeads can absorb other pollutants and can be ingested by animals, resulting in an increase in the amount of those pollutants in the food chain.
Under the proposed legislation, called the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, manufacturing could continue until July 1, 2017 and sales would be phased out from 2018 through 2019. The House bill was sponsored by Republican Fred Upton of Michigan and Democrat Frank Pallone, Jr. of New Jersey. A similar bill is under consideration in the Senate.
- The Guardian
- press release from Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a manufacturers' group
- Detroit News
- The Hill blog
- Consumerist
- Smithsonian
- Center for Effective Government
- TreeHugger
In July, the International Campaign Against Microbeads in Cosmetics has made a list of products which contained microbeads.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @08:38PM
From what I read, opponents of microbeads are often against an exception for biodegradable plastics. Illinois made such an exception, without defining the conditions nor time scale for biodegradation. In October, California passed a law [latimes.com] which will ban all types of plastics; it will go into effect in 2018 through 2020. In that article, a representative of Californians Against Waste spoke in favor of the law, no plastic in these products [...] was always the objective" and praising the absence of "loopholes that would allow for use of potentially harmful substitutes."
The Guardian [theguardian.com] has an article saying that
and noting that when an engineering professor tested two types of supposedly biodegradable plastics, he found drastic differences in the rate at which they decomposed: after 6 months, 30% of polyhydroxyalkanoate or PHA had decayed (about the same as for plant material) whereas less than 5% of the polylactic acid (PLA) samples had decayed.
The NGO 5 Gyres has a page [5gyres.org] explaining their opposition to what they call "the biodegradable loophole."
Another NGO, the Society for Conservation Biology, is critical of the Illinois law, writing [conbio.org]:
They cite California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery Publication #DRRR-2012-1435 [ca.gov], which appears to be the same source used by The Guardian. That report has a photo showing the PLA sample after a year's immersion in water, looking pristine.
The Plastic Soup Foundation gave cautious support [beatthemicrobead.org] to an effort to build a bioplastics factory, saying "When microbeads are truly biodegradable and can completely dissolve in the natural environment, then we applaud wholeheartedly this new development.”
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Reziac on Sunday December 13 2015, @03:44AM
"opponents of microbeads are often against an exception for biodegradable plastics"
That's because this type of environazi is not working toward a cleaner environment; they're working toward the end of human civilization.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @02:19AM
Because it will all come crashing down if we don't exfoliate daily.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 14 2015, @11:54AM