Did you know that plastic cotton swabs are among the most common everyday objects in aquatic environments? Good news:their days are numbered. Indeed, within the framework of the Biodiversity law adopted on July 20, 2016, the Parliament decided to prohibit their marketing in France, from January 1, 2020.
Antidia Citores, spokesperson for the Surfrider Foundation Europe association, explains to Parisien that cotton swabs “release chemical substances which continue to diffuse into the environment throughout their lifespan and come to agglomerate in the plastic continent”. She also denounces the fact that they affect birds and fish, whose organs they risk perforating if they are ingested. Thus, in 2016, more than 16,000 plastic cotton swabs were found by the association in rivers or on European coasts. A figure that can be explained by the fact that many people flush them down the toilet rather than putting them in the trash. Result:they are normally stopped by the grids of wastewater treatment plants, but in the event of heavy rain, they can be released into the environment...
To comply with the law, brands will have to develop cotton swabs made of biodegradable and compostable paper. There are already cotton swabs with a wooden or cardboard stick. The other option is also the use of hearing sprays. This ban on plastic cotton swabs is part of an approach aimed at having cosmetics with a less significant impact on the environment (with in particular the ban on plastic microbeads in scrubs, for example). Clearly, this will not change much for us, but for the environment, it changes everything. Well done!
