Our glitter obsession could be ruining the environment

It's festival season.

So naturally, everybody's Instagrams, Snapchat stories, and Twitter feeds are full of all our mates soaking up the sun with a can or two donned in their best festival makeup. The one common denominator of all these #looks being, of course, glitter. It seems like every week there's a new glitter trend that people are obsessing over. Who could forget the glitter roots fad, glitter boobs, and the fact that some people actually want to have glitter bursting from their vaginas. Glitter makes everything better (except your vagina, please don't put glitter in your vagina), but now some people are warning that our sparkly obsession could actually be destroying the environment. As we all know, it is never safe to use craft glitter on our bodies because it tends to be made of metal. It's for this reason that cosmetic glitter exists, so we don't wreck our skin or, god forbid, lose an eye. However, most cosmetic glitter is still made up of tiny little pieces of plastic meaning that it is non-biodegradable. Once washed off, these microplastics end up in the ocean where they can be ingested by tiny animals, leading to countless issues along the food chain. According to US TV show Catalyst, microplastics account for 85 percent of all plastics that end up in the environment. As well as this, studies have shown that fish caught for human consumption are also starting to contain microplastics due to the high volumes of the material that end up in the sea. The likes of Kentucky festival Forecastle have already decided to ban the use of glitter for this very reason. So what's the solution? Well, there are environmentally friendly glitter options you can use instead. Handmade cosmetics chain Lush uses synthetic mica in their glitter products which is non-toxic, protects the environment, and also has not been sourced using child labour. So, will you be making the switch?