Are Body Wash Products Good for Our Water?
You know those body washes with the micro-beads that make your skin all lovely and soft?
An article in Scientific American explains how these micro beads or micro exfoliates are harming marine life in the Great Lakes region of the USA.
The beads contained in many body washes are made from plastic (which means they’re made from petro-chemicals or oil).
They’re tiny – so tiny that water treatment plants can’t filter them.
They wash down the drain, and eventually end up back in our lakes and rivers.
Because they’re plastic, they don’t biodegrade.
So they get eaten – by fish, birds and turtles for example.
If fish or birds eat the inert beads, the material can deprive them of nutrients from real food or get lodged in their stomachs or intestines, blocking digestive systems.
Scientific American
(Of course there are micro beads in water wherever these body wash products are used, not just in the Great Lakes. But they are particularly concentrated there, according to the study).
Do micro beads work?
That article got me wondering if a body wash with micro beads really works better, or if it’s just another marketing ploy?
Either way, it’s definitely not green to use personal grooming products such as exfoliators, body washes, shower creams and gels with micro beads.
So, what can you do instead to get fresh, glowing skin?
Alternatives
Well, I’m going back to what we used to use before micro beads.
Here are 2 ways:
- A dry loofah. Use a good quality, natural loofah as a dry exfoliating brush before bathing.
- Wet the loofah and use it with your favourite green and eco friendly soap or shower gel (the one without the micro beads, of course!)
The same effect – glowing skin – without the damage!
Update: Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble will phase out the use of polyethylene microbeads in their beauty products – hooray! All due to the work of environmentalist group 5 Gyres – people DO make a difference!
Here’s hoping that other companies follow suit – and here’s also hoping that they don’t simply replace the microbeads with another type of plastic beads!
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And they say green solutions are a modern day thing! I recall having a loofah when I was still in single digit years (several decades ago) and that was because it was the only solution and could be bought in any personal care section of department stores or even small corner shops.
Green solutions are modern in that we’ve only needed them recently – since we started going crazy with resources and consumerism and chemicals. Often the “solutions” aren’t really solutions as such, just the original, sensible way of doing things the way we used to do them. The nice thing about loofahs is that they’re natural and don’t represent any loss of convenience over micro beads.
It sounds like loofahs were more readily available during your childhood than they are now where I live (find-able, but not easily). Thanks for sharing your memories!
best scrub ever is salt and used coffee grounds, messes up the shower tray a bit but leaves your skin as soft as a baby’s. you don’t need a loofah of course just hands!
Absolutely, and because the coffee grounds are reused it’s a very ‘green’ concoction – thanks for that!
A dear friend of mine swears by these because of the price. I told her about Dr. Bronners being as cost effective, has multiple uses and is best for your largest organ! However, that still didn’t work! So as a bday present, I bought a nice glass soap dispenser and filled it with the Lavender Dr. Bronners castille soap. Her husband loves it and now uses it everyday!
That’s a great way of getting your message across, well done – I like that idea!
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