These too are microplastics? Microplastic Part II

We talked about microplastics from fleece and tea bags in our previous post. Today is the continuity, in learning more about where these pesky little destroyers are hiding.

Don’t we all love a little “bling bling” when it comes to party designing, costumes, even our Christmas and New Year decorations? Sequins from your beautiful dress, glitters on your Christmas decorations and art projects are all sources of stealth microplastics.

We call it "stealth" microplastics as you do not often see them as plastics (as in plastic bags). They have put on their attractive disguises and let the term “plastic” slipped pass our mind. We are basically “blinded” by their blings.

There is this craze of sequins till I see almost every student of mine is having some sort of sequins on their pencil case. They would happily show off their sequins pencil case, in all shapes, colours and sizes, even playing with it to show me that those sequins have different colours on each side, by smoothing it in opposite directions with hands. The level of “sequinness” has almost made me fall into the trap too.

Remember the overwhelming feeling when you first handle colourful glitters for a school project? After the project was completed and submitted, high chance there was still the presence of glitters on you, hiding behind your ears, jawlines, table, pen and etc. The overwhelming feeling gradually turns into irritation, as no matter how many times you clean or wash, the glitters still poke their heads out from your least expected places even after long.

These tiny bits of plastics are beautiful but annoying. They are terrible for our environment. To many marine animals, these glitters are easily mistaken as their food. They are so small that they do not get to be filtered out before entering our waterways.

Next time, before you decide to add a little bling to your wardrobe, think twice. Do you really need that bling on that T-shirt which you would not wear for more than 3 times? Glitters on festive decorations or we can actually avoid? Even if you cannot do a complete ban on these items, you can always start by reducing aka stop buying more.

Remember, not all that glitters are gold. They may merely be shiny microplastics.

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Note: Photos of glitters are taken with glitters of my students, and photo of sequins was taken from a stall selling accessories (hairpin) with permission.