Sprinkle the world with a glitter that loves the planet
Glitter, the beautiful polluter. Regardless of how innocent and beautiful glitter may seem, reality is the little fragments of plastic pose a great threat to the environment.
The damage of glitter
Glitter always seems a great idea at first, but when you get back home and the scrubbing begins, you realise what a mission to clean the aftermath is. We have all experienced the never ending presence that glitter leaves, you can scrub, exfoliate, clean, wash your hair over and over, but you will still find glitter weeks, or even months down the line.
Finding glitter in your home or on your body is merely a minimal inconvenience compared to the damage that it is doing to our oceans. Once washed down the drain after your wash, glitter becomes a micro-plastic. Micro-plastics are tiny fragments of plastic that pollute the environment.
Upon entering our oceans and seas, micro-plastics are consumed by all marine life, from plankton, to fish, to whales. Once consumed micro-plastics clog up the insides of species, damaging their livers and impairing their digestive systems. Micro-plastics cause these creatures to lose their appetite, causing them to become unwell and resulting in them starving to death.
The alternative
Wouldn’t life be boring without a sparkle, luckily there is no need to wave goodbye to glitter for good. Bio-degradable glitter is now becoming more and more popular. Bio-degradable glitter usually takes 2-3 months to degrade compared to that of micro-plastics which take over 1,000 years.
Bio-degradable glitter is in-expensive, and can be the same price as the plastic glitter brands and pots. Bio-degradable glitter is available at the following, starting from £1.20:
Thankfully 61 UK festivals so far have pledged that by 2021 to remove glitter and other single use plastics from their campgrounds, including Boomtown and Shambala. However, a campaign has gone a step further, and is now calling for all plastic glitter to be banned from the UK. The petition appeals to Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to enact this ban.
So this year for your festival look, make it eco-friendly, because wearing a face full of micro-plastics really isn’t that cool!