With such a push against single use plastic and mirco plastics etc. Why is glitter left untouched? surely it has to be one of the worse plastic pollutants. Currently getting our Christmas shop ready, and its on everything and gets everywhere!
Seeing the comments here and people don’t even realise how widespread glitter is. It’s in everything and used in a variety of industries. From pharmaceuticals to construction, to transport, vehicles, military… in fact the one of the biggest consumers of glitter is kept secret so who knows, could be the military. It won’t surprise me. We really need to find an alternative.
I thought i read somewhere that the biggest consumers of glitter are the auto makers because it’s in nearly all the paint.
That sparkly quartz kitchen top? Yeah…crushed quartz and glitter to make it sparkle. As I said, it’s everywhere.
Interesting. Not surprising, but that’s one I didn’t think about.
Still, that’s one use that’s not making anything worse, right? I mean, that counter is going to be used for decades, and when it does go to the landfill, the glitter in it is hardly going to make a difference.
I see you watched that YouTube video too 😉
Best guess seems to be Crest Toothpaste
https://www.dentalbuzz.com/2014/03/04/crest-imbeds-plastic-in-our-gums/
This is from 2014. Can you still buy these products in the US?
At least in the EU, solid microplastics within cosmetics have been forbidden since 2018 (silicones etc. are still allowed unfortunately).
Hmm so it would seem. Most recent thing I found was from 11m ago and says the toothpaste theory is bunk but no real answer has been found.
I’ll never argue in favor of glitter, but if we’re discussing micro plastics there’s this:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-43023-x
All the synthetic shit cloth you wear and/or sleep on has impact.
Likely to make more impact on this microplastic by buying cotton or bamboo than trying to ban glitter.
Damn, dude. I never even thought of synthetic fabrics as a source. Plastic is one of the worst things we could have ever made.
It’s also one of the most useful things we’ve ever made. Medical devices alone. The problem is mismanagement and overuse for profit by bad actors who lied to the world and said not to worry cause it’s all being reused again and again in this closed feedback loop called recycling
very good point
100% cotton gang on standby
I’d be surprised if there isn’t a company making biodegradable glitter
The thing about glitter is, that it is often the waste from other processes cut up finely. You need those processes to use environmentally safe sheets of shiny paper.
There is.
For 15 times the price
I’d buy it for 30x the price. 10 years after having two girls get ready for the millennium in my bathroom (which involved the liberal spraying of glitter) I could still find that shit in crevices.
one quick DDG search, first result: https://thegoodglitter.com/
Edible glitter already exists. I’d have to imagine that it is also biodegradable.
I wouldn’t think it would have to be biodegradable, just inert and non-poisonous
Does that mean I can make my poop glitter?
You certainly can with mica. The downside is mica mining has definite links with child slave labour depending on the source, so, not as fun as hoped. https://brewglitter.com/collections/whiskey-liquor-glitters
Ooh I didn’t know that, interesting stuff
I find their suggestions for DIY glitter questionable, and I couldn’t tell you if all the article’s information is accurate, but Sustainable Jungle’s evaluation of current biodegradable glitters is worth a read, if you’re interested in glitter formulas.
Tl;dr There is active research into cellulose nanocrystals for glitter, which would still have some ecologically negative impacts, but otherwise everything on the market is likely greenwashing, to various degrees.
I’d be surprised if there is, seeing as glitter is made from plastic and aluminium
It’s also apparently used in certain types of kitchen surfaces (quartz or granite if i’m not mistaken) to give them a sparkly finish, not too sure people would be happy to find their kitchen surfaces shine “biodegraded” and looking duller after half a century lol
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The biggest culprits are probably polyester and acrylic fabrics, plus tires… and there isn’t likely to be a will to do anything about those. But yeah, glitter is annoying.
Glitter is a novelty in every use case, though.
Polyester is too, but it’s a substantial and noticeable difference and improvement (a milestone even) as a life comfort. Glitter is just nice to look at.
Overall, there is just not a lot of plastic in glitter. It’s incredible thin. It’s like aluminium foil, while we use a lot of meters of foil as households, the kg used is quite little given the surface. And glitter is the same. Getting everyone to buy one less plastic chair is more than they’ll use up in glitter over their entire life, basically.
Ah so it’s just tiny tiny little harmless microplastics. That shouldn’t be of any concern… 😑
Not compared to the amount of microplastic larger products with degrade into.
Glitter isn’t microplastics.
Like, I’m not saying glitter is not a problematic and rather needless product, but on the list of problematic and rather needless products to get people away from it’s quite far down the list.
Surely nothing is less use than glitter?
So everything is more or equally as useless as glitter? According to you? I’m confused now.
🙃
The concern is that glitter is smaller and harder to dispose of responsibly. It’s likely to end up polluting the ground or the water, as opposed to something like a chair, which, having less surface area, and being disposed of as a whole piece after some decades, is not actually going to bleed that much.
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I love how this comment is exactly the opposite of the one above it
A lot of the glitter nowadays is biodegradable
The whole thing against single use plastic is for consumers not business.
Glitter is not a major micro plastic source, and people who buy glitter are probably not people who are worried about micro plastics anyways. Car tires are so much more of a micro plastics source that it’s almost not worth worrying about other sources until we figure that one out.
Why not Glitter?
Because he’s a paedo
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I think most glitters you can buy around here are biodegradable so that
unfortunately not.
from wiki: Modern glitter is usually manufactured from the combination of aluminum and plastic which is rarely recycled and finds its way into the aquatic habitats eventually becoming ingested by animals, leading some scientists to call for bans on plastic glitter.[8][9][10][11]
around here
Was the key word
I know what glitter is but there’s both edible and biodegradable glitter.
The latter is what I was referring to.
Not all kinds of glitter is made of plastic ? AFAIK one of the oldest and most popular sources of glitter is mica, which is a mineral (or rather a group of minerals) ?
I’ve never seen glitter used outside the context of 7 year old girls or pride parades.
It’s everywhere at festivals
And boat shows.
And Christmas decorations.
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