INDIO, Calif. (CelebrityAccess) Sure, Coachella fans, it’s all fun and games to put glitter on your face until Mother Nature gets hurt.
Glitter is not environmentally friendly and, just in time for the festival season, the Debbie Downers in the newspaper business are more than happy to guilt people into thinking twice before getting all sparkly.
The Standard in the U.K. rattled off all of the problems, dropping the name of Greenpeace in the process. The UK government banned microbeads in cosmetics in January, raising the alarm on the damaging effects of cosmetic products on the ocean.
Greenpeace said 12.7 million tons of plastic are put into the ocean each year. Microbeads are found in toothpastes, shower gels and cleansers, the Standard said. They’re too small for sewage systems to filter out and they wind up in the stomachs of seagulls, whales, turtles, etc.
Oh, and fish, which means humans could wind up eating microbeads.
And glitter is made up of plastic, too. Several nursery schools in the U.K recently banned glitter in arts & crafts projects, according to the paper. More relevant, the Shindig and Shambala festivals have asked festivalgoers to not bring glitter onto the festival grounds, and WEAREFSTVL has in its contracts that all vendors using glitter must use biodegradable glitter.
Unfortunately for the UK, only manufacturer Ronald Britton is providing the alternative, a 96 percent biodegradable product called Bioglitter that uses a plant-based cellulose derived from eucalyptus trees.
Here in the good ol’ USA, though, we have Faran Krentcil who wrote an extensively researched piece for Elle magazine, offering all the various products that are offered stateside.
For glitter eye shadow, there’s actually a product from overseas called Bleach London that can be ordered online.
“With the huge environmental impact of micro plastics on the world’s oceans we’ve pledged to phase out all of our glitters containing it by the end of 2018,” founder Alex Brownsell, who does hair for Gucci and Florence Welch, told Elle. “In their place will be bio-degradable alternatives, made of certified compostable film with no sparkle spared.”
“Apply with a dry brush for sheer, loose shimmers, or wet your eyeshadow brush for more precise Jem and the Holograms vibes,” Krentcil said. “Bonus: all the packaging is sustainable and biodegradable, too.”
For face glitter, there’s Wild Glitter, founded by Olivia Moon.
“I like to use aloe vera gel as a gentle way to stick our glitter to your skin,” Moon told the magazine. “You can either use it like a glue [for more concentrated shimmer], or have fun mixing your own glitter gel!”
For glitter hair, there’s Disco Chunk from BioGlitz. And for bath bombs (like you don’t know what a bath bomb is) there is Lush Cosmetics.
More information is available here because glitter is still cool if you’re reading this in 2016.
