Despite the UK’s ban on microplastics in rinse-off products, hidden microplastic bombs still exist in our regular care routines. Many leave-on products like lipsticks still contain solid microplastic particles and are used daily and generously on the faces of millions of consumers. And liquid polymers, which have not been affected by the ban, are pretty much everywhere, from sun protection products to nail polishes and all kinds of hair styling products, and yet, they are unattended by the public or regulatory bodies. Here you can find the results of our large microplastic report.
It would be easy to prevent microplastics and poorly degradable, liquid polymers contained in cosmetics from entering our food and water cycles. Countries such as Great Britain, the USA, Canada or New Zealand have already banned the use of plastic microbeads (such as "polyethylene") in rinse-off products (like soaps or peelings). However, the use of microplastics in leave-on products (such as face creams, make-up and sunscreens) is still permitted. Also non-biodegradable liquid polymers, which are used in large quantities in cosmetics as opacifiers, film formers, emulsifiers and surfactants, to name a few functions, have not even been included in the discussion yet.
For our report, we analyzed a total of 50,737 cosmetic products for 159 poorly biodegradable, synthetic polymers in 34 product categories like face creams, shampoos or lipsticks in the UK.
