You'll hear people swear that the secret to good skin is good exfoliation, and that the secret to good exfoliation is microbeads. You may not know them by name, but you've seen them: They're those teeny tiny plastic balls that tend to crop up in your body washes, face soaps, and toothpastes. But it's time to say so long, because the Senate just passed the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, which bans those little buggers from beauty products.
It was actually kind of a no-brainer for Congress because microbeads are terrible for the environment and, by extension, terrible for you. They're made out of plastic, which means that they don't degrade when you wash them down the sink. Instead, they suck up toxins and get dumped into the ocean, where fish think they're little fishy food snacks and eat them up. Then you and your soft, exfoliated skin eat the fish and it's your body that gets slowly poisoned by toxins. Ick.
The bad news is that microbeads are being phased out, so we won’t be totally rid of them until 2017 (and many products are still stuffed full of them). But the good news is that, in the mean time, there are tons of awesome products out there to replace the ones you're using now.
Here are 10 of our favorite face and body scrubs that are microbead-free. Better for you, better for the fishies.
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