Personal cleanliness is unavoidable in modern society, though environment-harming exfoliating beads – found in many facial cleansers – are not.
The beads in exfoliating scrubs are not biodegradable. They are often made out of plastic as they are required to hold up under running water.
Plastic is widely known to negatively effect wildlife.
Though the plastic beads create a better scrub than non-exfoliating cleansers, the beads can never be removed from the Great Lakes.
The beads are too fine to retrieve, though they still have the potential to be eaten by marine life.
The Trudeau government will be following up on various environmental concerns, water quality being one of them.
The liberal prime minister made a statement about conservation of Canada’s environment, “The environment and the economy,” he said, “They go together. They go together like paddles and canoes. If you don’t take care of both, you’re never going to get to where you’re going.”
Exfoliating scrubs bring in a lot of income which serves the interest of the producer-consumer relationship, though very little consideration is given to the fish who ingest it.
The government is now putting together a plan to ban ‘microbeads’ from all facial cleansers and even toothpaste.
Canadian consumers have until March 10 to make a decision, as Environment Canada works out a strategy for eliminating the environmental hazard.
Should the regulations be passed, the production of microbeads will be banned by 2017 and the sale of such products would be banned by 2018.