The great glitter debate, is it Biodegrable?

We have noticed over the past year that consumers are paying more attention to glitter following media coverage. I have personally noticed an increase in people jumping on social media posts to raise alarm whether featured glitter is “biodegrable”. Brands are noticing this, quickly searching for biodegrable, washing their hands of traditional glitter and forgetting to educate their customers on responsible use of the glitter they sold to them. Disappointingly we have even seen brands unwittingly purchasing cheaper imported (and mislabeled) bio glitter and even merging their tradition and biodegradable under one bio-banner. Top tip - A quick way to identify if you are being misled, if holographic and iridescent are present, it is not currently achievable in a biodegrable.

We care about the environment and we are working hard to research quality glitter alternatives, its effects on the environment and the next generation of sparkle which could potentially reduce the fear of causing environmental damage. 
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Featuring artists @ellis_atlantis and @katybaehm on instagram

Want to go eco? Try our saver bundle, pots also available separately.

We have made changes to our website product listings to make identifying eco/bio and poly glitter easier if customers have a preference. We haven’t found any specific and detailed research to show or prove glitter causes environmental damage. You will notice most magazine articles and anti-glitter campaigners base their view on micro bead research despite it being a different structure and content, usually recommending brands who abruptly became “bio” and some even pressure big events to police customers to the biodegrable market. Other researchers suggest that traditional glitter is too insignificant to even have an impact.

So the debate goes on, we cannot find proven facts for either side, but there is a heavy mainstream spin which will always sway public opinion. However, we absolutely agree that any substitute which is COMPLETELY biodegradable and eco friendly can only be better and we will completely favour those good quality alternatives as they become available.

Last year we worked with our manufacturers and tested a new development – eco glitter. Eco glitter is economically friendly because it contains no plastic whatsoever and is made purely from mineral. Eco glitter is simply returned back to the environment it came from without the need to break down, so no harm or risk at all. When we tested it we were over the moon, super sparkly (even better than traditional) and when applied onto a crème base or directly onto the skin it created beautiful sparkle, we couldn’t resist and it’s now a customer favourite. The particles are super fine and metallic which make it even more diverse to create metal leaf effects with water based products and liquid metal with oil based products.

This year the same manufacturer returned to us with an amazing development, an iridescent eco glitter! Again it is all mineral based, so it will return to the environment with no issues. We are the first to have this incredibly beautiful alternative and it’s been an instant success since we launched it just last week. We are confident other manufacturers will now begin developing more versions. This is the first time iridescent eco glitter has been achieved and we hope the technique can help manufacturers diversify the eco range further.

Now let’s talk about the biodegrable, this glitter is different to eco glitter as it needs to break down before it can disperse into the environment. We have been in touch with the brand Bio-Glitter for a few years, they are the brand who took seven years to develop a plant based biodegrable glitter, long before other manufacturers even considered it. The first phase of bio-glitter which is readily available now in a small range of shades and plenty of different flake sizes. It comes quite close to looking like a traditional glitter but is less sparkly and metallic. They have created a great product which most glitter brands have embraced and invested in. The only reason we didn’t instantly follow suit is because the full colour range hadn’t been manufactured at the time of approaching them.

Bio-glitter is 92% plastic free, however later in 2018 Bio-glitter release its next generation of glitter… Bio-glitter Pure! The pure version will have no plastic content at all being 100% biodegradable. We are excited to see the range for its sparkle properties and colour range to decide if we convert our metallic range. We are even told that there may be ways for the next generation film to be developed further to create iridescent and holographic finishes so we can adopt those in the future. We cannot wait!

As many customers will appreciate, we have approached being environmentally friendly differently. We feel it would be irresponsible to instantly encourage mass disposal of glitter, surely that exercise would cause environmental issues?

We have reduced the amount of traditional glitter we order and stock, ready to gradually and responsibly replace as alternatives are developed. We can educate ourselves on how to use glitter more responsibly too until fully biodegrable and eco glitters can replace it. We will continue to promote responsible disposal to reduce the amount of glitter which makes its way into our water systems. We recommend removing glitter carefully with sticky tape, placing the folded tape into waste disposal. Then remove excess carefully with a cotton pad and oil or moisturiser so the remaining glitter stays on the cotton pad for disposal.