Softer Skin and a Plastic Sea - Oceana USA
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June 16, 2008

Softer Skin and a Plastic Sea

BY: Emily Fisher

Hillary Rosner at Slate points out a great advertising irony today: A face exfoliant ad shows a peaceful underwater scene — while promoting a product that contributes to ocean pollution. Big-brand skin exfoliants are composed of tiny particles of polyethylene (plastic) that make your face soft and touchable, then end up in the sea, where marine life potentially mistake them for plankton.I was momentarily comforted to learn that my personal favorite exfoliator (and, it seems, a permanent fixture in all my friends’ showers), St. Ives Apricot Scrub, uses apricot kernels, not plastic, as its skin scrubbers. But it’s hardly just skincare products that are to blame for the ocean’s plastic problem. Help Oceana get the word out about the mass of trash bigger than Texas that’s floating in the Pacific Ocean by signing our pledge not to trash the oceans today!

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