US To Ban All Soap With Microbeads

Remember when we talked about how products with microbeads were terrible for the environment and that you should never, ever buy them? It would appear that the US government agrees. A bill which bans the sale of personal care products that contain microbeads has just passed the House of Representatives and will soon go to the Senate for approval. Several states have already banned the products, phasing them out over the next several years – this bill, when eventually passed into law, will ban microbeads across the country.

Begone with you, terrible pieces of trash! No longer will I cleanse my skin with soap that has tiny pieces of trash in it! That's what we're all about, ever since we first heard from the American Chemical Society back in September of this year. Since then, we've actively avoided products with microbeads at all costs.

Products with Microbeads: why you need to stop using them now

Not that it was difficult. Products with microbeads generally cost a bit more than those without – the creators of these tiny pieces of plastic need a way to pay for the damage they're doing. Plastic isn't free, after all.

As we discussed back in September, these little beads may very well be assisting the soap or shampoo or whatever your using in cleansing your skin, but after that, it's bad news.

1. You buy the soap with microbeads.

2. You use the soap in the shower.

3. Whatever microbeads haven't stuck to you go down the drain with the water.

4. The water enters our public water system.

5. Fish eat the beads.

6. You eat the fish.

This is only one example of how the beads make their way back into your body. Just as you avoid flushing pieces of plastic down your toilet or tossing soda pop bottles into your local river, you really SHOULD reconsider using microbeads, as you're effectively doing the same thing.

Microbeads are trash. You don't put trash in the water you drink.

Above is the same comic we used back in September to preach. It was illustrated by Steve Greenberg.

In addition to feeding fish and polluting our water sources, they can be ingested by all manner of creatures in our natural world. Microbeads are able to travel long distances – effectively forever, since they're certainly not bio-degradable – and find themselves in the bellies of creatures to whom they can give "cellular necrosis, inflammation, and laceration of tissues" – that's according to the American Chemical Society.

So here we are, December of 2015, just a few months after the American Chemical Society published their very important paper on the subject, and the US government is near banning the sale of products with microbeads forever. While it certainly should have happened faster, we're glad it's happening at all!

BELOW: Three more places we can watch the world get greener!

VIA: The Guardian