Killer bubble bath cashing in on Nemo
A bubblebath cashing in on the popularity of Disney’s Finding Nemo, which is the most watched film about sealife, is among the a host of bathroom products containing plastic “microbeads” that pollute the oceans and harm marine life.
One of the films featured in the Scubaverse Essential films for divers, Finding Nemo is brilliant at portraying the marine life characters that divers know and love.
The kid’s bubble bath, sold at Tesco, features Nemo, a turtle and a starfish on the packaging, designed to get marine life loving parents buying it for their kids. Yet the product contains tiny deadly pieces of plastic that end up being washed down drains and into our seas.
The microscopic beads are commonly, & unnecessarily, used in bathroom and beauty products as exfoliates, as glitter, filler or as a bonding agent. The tiny pieces of plastic are too small to be filtered out in water processing plants and so end up being washed out to sea. Fish and other marine life end up accidentally eating the microbeads, which then cause starvation.
Microbeads have already been banned in the USA and it is time the UK government did something positive for the marine environment and followed suit.
According to a Facebook post by The Marine Conservation Society, Tesco say it now plans to audit all branded beauty products that contain microbeads & encourage the makers to remove them. But this is not enough. UK laws need to be changed to ensure microbeads are removed from products; multi-nationals must find alternatives right now.
It is extraordinary to think that any company would use the love of marine life to sell a product that ultimately will cause their deaths.
You can sign a petition urging David Cameron to do all he can to ban these destructive plastics here.
