It’s very common in toothpaste, especially. Abrasive materials help a ton with removing plaque.
If you want to buy toothpaste without it, it seems you’re more likely to get microplastic-free toothpaste if it’s made in China, Vietnam, Myanmar, and the UAE, and are likely to get microplastics in toothpaste made in Malaysia, Turkey, and India. Also, I think at least Crest has said they’ve removed them from all their toothpaste, but out of the brands tested by an organization dedicated to removing microbeads from products, it seems about 50%+ of brands still used them as of 2020.
And it also seems like the actual % weight of the toothpaste comprised of these beads can be anywhere from 0.2% to 7.24%, which is no small quantity.
What IS a microbead?
Tiny little bits of plastic that get put into some products (creams, pastes, I think I’ve even heard toothpaste) as an abrasive element
It’s very common in toothpaste, especially. Abrasive materials help a ton with removing plaque.
If you want to buy toothpaste without it, it seems you’re more likely to get microplastic-free toothpaste if it’s made in China, Vietnam, Myanmar, and the UAE, and are likely to get microplastics in toothpaste made in Malaysia, Turkey, and India. Also, I think at least Crest has said they’ve removed them from all their toothpaste, but out of the brands tested by an organization dedicated to removing microbeads from products, it seems about 50%+ of brands still used them as of 2020.
And it also seems like the actual % weight of the toothpaste comprised of these beads can be anywhere from 0.2% to 7.24%, which is no small quantity.
I’ve seen ground oats used in bar soap to do this and it works well