Today, our partner the Plastic Soup Foundation presents the results of their latest study: Plastic – The Hidden Beauty Ingredient. The study is first of its kind and includes the major household cosmetics brands. Analysing the data from users of their Beat The Microbead app, they learned that 87% (please take a second to process this number, maybe lie down?) of products from the biggest brands contain so-called microplastics. 

A remarkable fact, as producers have long been promising to eliminate microbeads from their ingredients lists, which suggests they are aware of the potential dangers hidden in such components. Makes sense, because you don’t have to be a biologist or medical specialist to realize that using toothpaste, shampoo, or face crème full of microplastics on a daily basis might prove to be bad for both people and the environment! Their incentive to keep using them nonetheless? An educated guess would be that it rhymes with ‘honey’. But why should you care about some plastic report??

Well, did you know that in Europe alone, 7 kilograms of microplastics from cosmetics are flushed into the environment every minute? And did you know that there are many, many types of microplastics of which we know nothing about the long-term health-effects? And that scientists have enormous concerns about the omnipresence of plastic in our world? And have you heard that for the first time in human history, a Dutch study found microplastic in 80% of their subjects’ blood streams? Another milestone that doesn’t exactly call for much celebration. So, scientists agree, big producers are in the know and in denial at the same time, consumers and the environment need change… What to do?

The people at PSF compare this situation to a casino with serious health risks. Imagine a roulette table, where only 13% of the numbers win you relatively basic prizes such as silky hair, moisturized skin, or minty teeth, while the other 87% of the numbers could hide secret prices such as microscopic plastic parts entering your body or irreversible environmental damage. Now, would you play this table without asking questions, or would you ask for a slight change of the rules? Because at the moment, PSF states, most of us are doing the first.

And this is where their #DareToCare campaign comes in! The Plastic Soup Foundation is daring the people who make our cosmetics to be transparent and to stop using all potentially harmful microplastics, right now. And here at Smyle we join them in calling upon everyone who uses cosmetics and cares about their health and the future of the planet. Please send your favourite brand a message and ask them to stop using all microplastics, without exceptions. You can do so by finding your brand on the PSF website and sending them a clear, pre-written message. It never hurts to ask and it takes less than a minute! 

Together we can send a clear signal. Enough is enough, or to slightly paraphrase the people at PSF: “we want plastic out of our bodies and the environment, now!”

Sign the petition go to PSF website.