Mckenzie Mattison

Consumer Analysis

Feb 18^th, 2018

A very important product to me, and a lot of other people, would have to be shampoo and conditioner; Or for that matter, any hair-care product. I tend to find myself buying shampoo and conditioner about every three-to-four months and I am frequently buying other beauty products as well. When examining a variety of beauty products you can tell that they are made up of many different materials. One single bottle of shampoo could contain plastic, glass, and microbeads that make it very difficult to break down when recycling or when they are thrown into the landfill.

One of the largest issues with hair-care products are microbeads. Microbeads became a large issue a few years ago when we discovered that these were not just affecting wildlife but also the human population. One of the main purposes of a container is to store a product for long periods of time without degrading. When microbeads were first invented they successfully kept the shelf life of a container ten-times long-lasting than that of previous ones. But what we didn’t know was that these materials were almost impossible to break down.

Unfortunately, many plastic bottles and containers are released into our oceans every year and are never fully broken down. They easily become tiny fragments and due to their distinct colors, many aquatic species mistake them for food. While this seems like it wouldn’t have a direct effect on the human species, it does. Think about where those microbeads go?…. In a fishes intestine…..We could imagine how difficult it would be to digest something that can’t be broken down…. And I would assume that it would stay there forever. But what happens when fisheries are harvesting these kinds of fish …??? You guessed it! WE EAT THEM!

It blows my mind that humans could throw a fit at a restaurant about finding a hair in their food, but when it comes to microbeads and ingesting non-biodegradable substances, we would allow it to happen. I think that overall humans need to reduce our consumer needs, buy products that do not contain microbeads, and purchase local and safe fish. In many countries microbeads have been banned and it is just a matter of time before consumers begin to realize the effects we are having on the environment and ourselves.