Oh, You Know, Just Another Reason That Glitter Is The Freaking Worst

When I was in my mid-20s, on Friday nights, my girlfriends and I loved to slather on an abundance of glittery makeup and lotion, dab on some Clinique Happy perfume, and go dance our asses off. We would be all sparkly and fabulous without a stretch mark or care in the world.

Well, life has changed in many ways for me — and so has glitter. That’s because I now have what’s called kids. Who like to do art projects. That involve glitter. Which is now my sworn enemy.

Glitter is like the butt boil of the craft world, and there, I’ve said it. It possesses the trifecta of art-related horrors: It’s impossible to clean up, it has a mind of its own, and if you have a bedazzle-loving child in your life, it’s literally everywhere. There is a reason why one of the worst things you can do to a person is send them an envelope filled with glitter. If you’ve ever received an envelope filled with glitter, assume that you are a horrible person or that someone you know hates you.

Glitter adheres to everything forever and never dies. IT NEVER DIES. We’ve all been that person walking around with a random shiny square stuck to our face even though we haven’t been around glitter for months. Where does it come from?! It reproduces somewhere, somehow, and I’m thinking that it maybe comes straight from hell on a train that also holds Legos and those little rubber bands from Rainbow Looms.

But there’s another reason why glitter is the absolute worst. It turns out that most glitter is considered a microplastic. And microplastics = environmental disasters. The National Ocean Service describes microplastics as “small plastic pieces less than five millimeters long which can be harmful to our ocean and aquatic life.” Microplastics can also increase the amount of harmful bacteria in ecosystems because they glue together acting “as a lifeboat,” according to research published in Environmental Science and Technology.

So yes, glitter is basically a sparkly poop raft.

When my girlfriends and I came home from our night of partying in our 20s, we’d inevitably wash all those fancy, iridescent specks right down into the drain. Out into the world where they probably eventually ended up in the ocean because glitter is a bitch like that.

Sorry, Ocean.

So, if you hate glitter like I do, you can just stop reading right now and tell your kids, sorry, kids, glitter wrecks the environment, say BUH-BYE to the shimmer and shine because oceans are important, and you don’t want to kill the whales, right sweetie?

But if you’re a masochist or someone who has a serious Pinterest addiction or maybe Kylie Jenner, I’ll tell you that you do have options rather than ruin the earth with your sparkly fetish. Yes, world, there is biodegradable glitter now. Because of course there is.

A company called Glitter Revolution makes glitter that is made out of plant cellulose. It probably still gets everywhere and has a mind of its own and will ride around on your face when not invited, but at least it won’t ruin the environment. Yay?