Glitter! It’s everywhere, and you can’t get rid of it, but if you’re on certain sides of social media, you might have heard in the last month or so that we’re running out of glitter! And apparently, the glitter companies are so secretive that they won’t even let people into their factories. There’s two main glitter companies, and they say “you’d never know our biggest client’s products even had glitter on them and we can’t tell you what it is.” Well, WE’LL tell you. And we’ll take a diversion to talk about the sand mafia too.
There aren’t a ton of links for this one, honestly. I’ll just start with the original New York Times article that all the quotes from the initial interview came from.
Here is a link to the video Karen sent to us from @maxedoutmommy. She puts things all out in PowerPoint form in a very informative way.
This is a long Reddit Ask Me Anything thread from a Glitter Manufacturer that I waded through looking for information for you. There’s interesting stuff in there, if you want to read it.
In the middle of this episode, we took a diversion to talk about sand, since sand is a theory about where the glitter is going. But that led up to talk about Sand Mafias. So here’s a link. Remember, for an environmental problem with sand consumption, you, the individual, can do very little – it’s the corporations and their use of it / reliance on it that’s the problem – but what you can do is just know the problem exists and where we can hold those corporations accountable for better practices.
Here’s a list of alternatives to standard glitter since we’re here talking about sustainability. These glitters are made of biodegradable materials. If you’re using glitter, consider one of these brands (or another bio one) instead. I’ll put a list for cosmetics and mica too.
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