Eco-friendly biodegradable microbeads are a thing now
Microbeads are detrimental to the environment, yet companies continue to put the tiny plastic spheres in their products, as Inhabitat reports.
Scientists at the University of Bath found a solution. They managed to create microbeads from cellulose, making them both biodegradable and renewable. One shower using a shower gel that contains microbeads, for instance, will pollute the ocean with 100,000 plastic particles, as the University of Bath estimates. The microbeads from sunscreens, toothpaste and cosmetics are so small that they can’t be filtered out by sewage filtration systems and end up in the ocean, where fish, birds and marine creatures consume them.
A research team created biodegradable microbeads. They dissolve cellulose, reform it into beads, thus making droplets that are set. They get their cellulose from waste products, like those from the paper-making industry, because they offer a renewable source of cellulose. The biodegradable microbeads will stay stable in a body wash, but at sewage treatment facilities organisms can break them down. They biodegrade into harmless sugars, as scientist Janet Scott said.
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“Microbeads used in the cosmetics industry are often made of polyethylene or polypropylene, which are cheap and easy to make. However, these polymers are derived from oil and they take hundreds of years to break down in the environment…We hope in the future these [microbeads] could be used as a direct replacement for plastic microbeads,” she said.
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