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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday December 03 2017, @09:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the impossible-tasks dept.

Some scientists want to ban glitter, a microplastic that can contribute to contamination of the world's oceans:

It's sparkly, it's festive and some scientists want to see it swept from the face of the Earth.

Glitter should be banned, researcher Trisia Farrelly, a senior lecturer in environment and planning at Massey University in New Zealand, told CBS. The reason? Glitter is made of microplastic, a piece of plastic less than 0.19 inches (5 millimeters) in length. Specifically, glitter is made up of bits of a polymer called polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which goes by the trade name Mylar. And though it comes in all sizes, glitter is typically just a millimeter or so across, Live Science previously reported.

Microplastics make up a major proportion of ocean pollution. A 2014 study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE estimated that there are about 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic weighing a total of 268,940 tons (243,978 metric tons) floating in the world's seas. Microplastics made up 92.4 percent of the total count.

NOAA and Plymouth University pages on microplastics.

Also at NYT and National Geographic.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @09:55PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @09:55PM (#604809)

    I was thinking of balsa.
    Problem being that I don't think that it will grow near the surfing consumers.
    The impact of shipping would likely offset any environmental gains. 8-(

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday December 03 2017, @10:56PM (1 child)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday December 03 2017, @10:56PM (#604831) Homepage

    Being serious here, there are a handful of hipsters who surf on plywood boards.

    Except that they're not hipsters, because hipsters are pusillanimous punks. The plywood surfers are the true super-autists of surfing, and they do it well.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @06:58AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @06:58AM (#604938)

      There's balsawood boards too. Fucking AMAZING ride.