Tag Archives: list

New map shows all the cities leading the world in climate action

Have you heard about the A list? It’s harder to clinch a spot on it than it is to score an invite to the Met Gala. And your city may be on it.

An environmental impact nonprofit called the CDP (formerly known as the carbon disclosure project) just released a list of cities that led the world in environmental performance last year. Only 43 metropolises got As in the organization’s first-ever assessment, and nearly half of them are in the United States!

Twenty-one cities in the United States made the list. And a whopping nine cities in the San Francisco Bay area got As, too — making up 21 percent of all the cities on the list. Cities all across the map — like Cape Town, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, and Paris — qualified as A-listers, as well.

So what kind of policies get you on the A list? Five of the U.S. cities are on the path to carbon neutrality by 2050 — a target that is emerging as the gold standard of decarbonization: Boston; Indianapolis; Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and West Palm Beach, Florida. Those cities may be leading the charge, but they are not alone: the Sierra Club’s Ready For 100 campaign has calculated that more than 90 U.S. cities have set or are in the process of setting 100 percent renewable energy targets.

The CDP determined the way each city scored by looking at things like climate risk and vulnerability, whether the city in question had a climate change adaptation strategy, how many emissions that city produces, and more. Of the 596 cities the nonprofit ranked, it only publicly disclosed the cities that got an A.

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New map shows all the cities leading the world in climate action

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Bitcoin: Are we really going to burn up the world for libertarian nerdbucks?

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The continued growth of power-hungry Bitcoin could lock in catastrophic climate change, according to a new study.

The cryptocurrency’s growth, should it follow the adoption path of other widely used technologies (like credit cards and air conditioning), would alone be enough to push the planet to 2-degree C warming, the red line value the world agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Bitcoin essentially converts electricity into cash, via incredibly complex math problems designed to eliminate the need for government-sponsored currencies. It’s made a lot of bros rich over the past few years, but it’s also raised some significant concerns about the ethics of sucking up excess energy on a finite planet.

The libertarian nerdbucks account for only a tiny fraction (0.033 percent) of global transactions right now, but its rapid growth and already sizable energy usage are worrisome. This latest study, from researchers at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, adds to the pile of evidence that Bitcoin needs to cut down dramatically on energy use — or risk taking down our chances for a clean energy future with it.

The Hawaii researchers looked at every single Bitcoin that was “mined” in 2017 and the mix of fuel used to create the electricity that powered the huge computer farms that produced each of them. Unlike past calculations, they put a stronger emphasis on the types of computer processing equipment, factoring in older, less-efficient models still in routine use by Bitcoin miners. Through this analysis, they found that Bitcoin is likely already producing more than double the greenhouse gases of previous best estimates. That means that despite its infinitesimal reach, the global Bitcoin network already uses a lot of electricity — about as much as the entire country of Austria.

“Currently, the emissions from transportation, housing and food are considered the main contributors to ongoing climate change,” said Katie Taladay, one of the paper’s authors, in a statement. “This research illustrates that Bitcoin should be added to this list.”

Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its starkest warning yet about what a world that’s 1.5 or 2 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels would be like, saying that civilization itself is at stake if the world fails to reduce emissions by half before 2030.

The entire world has somewhere between 250 and 750 billion tons of remaining carbon that can enter the atmosphere before a 2-degree world becomes inevitable. This includes everything: Every factory, every airplane, every tractor delivering hay to cattle on every ranch, every light in every building everywhere in the world.

The Hawaii study found that Bitcoin alone could use that entire budget in 22 years if it grows at the slowest rate of widely used technologies. And it could use it up in just 11 years — by 2029 — if it grows at a rate equal to the fastest-uptake technologies.

Or, Gaia willing!, Bitcoin could crash and burn or remake itself to use vastly less energy, according to the Hawaii team. The authors are clear that they’re not predicting exactly what will happen, only imagining the stakes of the worst-case scenario — with Bitcoin as ubiquitous as microwave ovens, with no significant changes to its algorithm to get more energy efficient.

There are glimmers of hope that have emerged in 2018 that Bitcoin could be heading for that first crash and burn scenario. After rising in value more than 300 percent in a little over a month late last year, Bitcoin has given up all those gains and stagnated for most of 2018. Lower prices for Bitcoin have given its proponents less of an incentive to invest in expanding the network.

And the Hawaii team pointed to tweaks to the overall system that could reduce energy usage. One of those modifications, building a Bitcoin mining system based on trust rather than continuing to escalate a computational arms race, has already been championed by some of the more ethical cryptocurrency activists. Bottom line: This is a solvable problem. And our future depends on us solving it.

What’s absolutely clear in a world like this is that we can’t afford to waste our precious time and energy on things (like Bitcoin) that aren’t directly related to decarbonizing the global economy as quickly as possible.

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Bitcoin: Are we really going to burn up the world for libertarian nerdbucks?

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8 Eco Products That Make Dish Duty Look Dreamy

For most of us, doing the dishes is pretty far down the list of tolerable chores. It’s such a slog ? and?something you need to keep up with every day, week by week, till the end of time. A good time? I think not.

Lucky for us, there are a lot of brands out there who are working hard creating clever products that make dish duty a lot more fun. Here are some of my favorites!

This Dish Soap

Not all dish soaps are created equal. Lots of them contain numerous chemicals, including foaming agents like sodium laureth sulfate, carcinogenic antibacterial agents and synthetic fragrances. Fortunately, there are a number of delicious, non-toxic variations out there: a favorite is this?safe and effective formula?by Eco-Me.

This Swedish?Dishcloth

You may have seen these cute little?dishcloths?slowly popping up in boutiques and specialty kitchen stores in recent years. Made from earth-friendly cellulose, cotton fibers and water-based inks, these reusable sponge cloths last about a year and compost at the end of their life. Cool right!? To clean, simply toss in the washing machine or microwave when damp to kill bacteria.

These?Bar Mops

These hand towels do what you wish every paper towel could. Made from 100% cotton, these lightweight,?absorbent towels are durable and efficient, plus they dry quickly so you won’t have to worry about mildew. Once you’re done with the task at hand, send them to the laundry. The earth will thank you!

These Copper Pot Scrubbers

Who knew a pot scrubber could be so elegant??These scrubbers are made from copper threads, so they’re tough enough to remove even the most stubborn food residue, but gentle enough to keep from scratching your beautiful cookware. And, bonus: they can be recycled at the end of their useful life.

These?Dish Towels

Renewable hemp woven in a honeycomb pattern makes this beautiful dish towel both strong and beautiful.?Because hemp is especially durable, you can expect these eco-conscious towels to last for years to come.

This Wooden Dish Brush

B?rstenhaus Redecker has been handcrafting brushes in Germany for over 75 years, and their commitment to high quality craftsmanship certainly shows! Use this brush to clean everything from coffee mugs to pots and pans. The hard bristles will hold up to just about anything.

These?Vintage?Trays

Vintage?knick knacks always come in handy. A quick Etsy search of vintage dish trays yields a vast selection of darling secondhand trays eager to prove their worth at your kitchen sink. This one is a?personal favorite (it will match your Swedish dishcloths)?? this one too!

This Bamboo Drying Rack

Perfect for all those hand wash-only items or kitchens without the luxury of a dishwasher, this bamboo dish rack is an attractive addition to the countertop. This particular one is made from eco-friendly bamboo and has two individual racks for large plates and glassware. Plus, it folds up neatly for easy storage!

Related Stories:

3 Ways Becoming a Minimalist Will Improve Your Life
Minimalism is a Debt-Demolishing Lifestyle (Here’s Why)
How to Lead a Nearly Zero-Waste Life

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Credit: 

8 Eco Products That Make Dish Duty Look Dreamy

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We Should Have a New List of Banned Countries By Now

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On January 27, President Trump issued an executive order on immigration. Within 30 days, the Secretary of Homeland Security was ordered to compile a list of the information needed from foreign countries to properly adjudicate new visa applications. Immediately thereafter, the Secretary of State was ordered to ask “all foreign governments that do not supply such information to start providing such information regarding their nationals within 60 days of notification.” At that point, any foreign government that refused to provide the necessary information would be “recommended for inclusion on a Presidential proclamation that would prohibit the entry of foreign nationals.”

That’s plain enough, and by April 27 this should have been completed. The executive order may have been stayed by the courts, but that affected only the immediate ban of visitors from seven specified countries. Homeland Security presumably carried out the president’s order to create the list, and the State Department presumably notified foreign countries of its requirements.

So did they? If they didn’t, what held them up? Why hasn’t any such list been published? And why is the Trump administration continuing to waste time in court over its EO since it should be moot at this point?

Has any progress been made on this? Or has Trump put it on hold in a huff because he didn’t get his way? Has anyone asked?

Link to original:

We Should Have a New List of Banned Countries By Now

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It’s Not Every Day That a Federal Judge Pens a Tribute to a Transgender Teen

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Gavin Grimm, a 17-year-old transgender boy from Virginia, has had a rough few months. He’s suing for access to the boys’ bathroom at his high school, and in March the Supreme Court announced that it was kicking this landmark transgender rights case back to a federal appeals court.

Today, that appeals court rejected his request to expedite his case, which means it won’t be heard until after he graduates. But along with today’s order, Judge Andre Davis of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals penned a remarkable, must-read tribute to the teen, calling him a “brave individual” and quoting Dr. Martin Luther King:

Our country has a long and ignominious history of discriminating against our most vulnerable and powerless. We have an equally long history, however, of brave individuals—Dred Scott, Fred Korematsu, Linda Brown, Mildred and Richard Loving, Edie Windsor, and Jim Obergefell, to name just a few—who refused to accept quietly the injustices that were perpetuated against them. It is unsurprising, of course, that the burden of confronting and remedying injustice falls on the shoulders of the oppressed. These individuals looked to the federal courts to vindicate their claims to human dignity, but as the names listed above make clear, the judiciary’s response has been decidedly mixed. Today, G.G. adds his name to the list of plaintiffs whose struggle for justice has been delayed and rebuffed; as Dr. King reminded us, however, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” G.G.’s journey is delayed but not finished.

The tribute ends with a footnote of a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. Read the whole thing here.

Original article – 

It’s Not Every Day That a Federal Judge Pens a Tribute to a Transgender Teen

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This Critique of Fake Election News Is a Must-Read for All Democracy Lovers

Mother Jones

This story was first published in Pacific Standard.

In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s narrow upset victory last week, many journalists and critics have leveled a finger at Facebook, claiming the social network was partly to blame for the growing milieu of false and misleading “news” stories that only serve to insulate potential voters within an ideological cocoon of their own making.

As Facebook continues to influence voter behavior with each passing election, the rising tide of fake news poses an existential threat to conventional journalistic organizations. “This should not be seen as a partisan issue,” sociologist Zeynep Tufecki observed in the New York Times on Tuesday. “The spread of false information online is corrosive for society at large.”

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg flatly rejected the assertion that Facebook shaped the election. “Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic,” he insisted; of course, the remaining 1 percent of users still encompass some 19.1 million people. Despite Zuckerberg’s denial, Facebook is now actively reassessing its role in distributing false information. And while the social media giant is taking tiny steps toward addressing the issue — excluding fake news sites from its advertising network, for one — it may take a renegade task force within Facebook itself to force how the company to truly understand its outsized influence on how Americans see the world at large.

Until technology companies cope with the structural sources of fake news, it’s up to the American people to rethink their consumption habits. That’s where Melissa Zimdars comes in. A communications professor at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, Zimdar recently began compiling a list of “fake, false, regularly misleading and/or otherwise questionable ‘news’ organizations” in a widely shared Google Doc of “False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and Satirical ‘News’ Sources.” It is a cheat sheet for media literacy in the Facebook age.

Zimdars’ viral guide — which encompasses websites from the outright fake (nbcnews.com.com) to the ideologically skewed (The Free Thought Project) to the clickbait-inflected (the Independent Journal Review)—began as a media literacy companion for her students. She decided to open-source the list after encountering an outright falsehood at the top of her Google News feed: that Hillary Clinton lost the popular vote.

“It’s a WordPress site! 70news.wordpress.com! And Google treated it like news!” Zimdars said when reached by phone on Tuesday. “That’s when I decided to make this public.” Pacific Standard spoke with Zimdars about fake news, Facebook, and the future of media literacy.

What inspired you to put this guide together?

I had been taking notes and making an unofficial list of questionable news sources to share with my students for the last few days, but I put in a lot of effort on Monday. The original impetus came from a general concern over the years about the sources students were using in their assignments or alluding to in their talking points. I say this not even as a reflection of where I currently teach; I’ve felt this way at every school I’ve worked at.

I strongly believe that media literacy and communication should be taught at a much younger age. Teachers don’t normally approach this content until the college level, and students continually have trouble determining what aspects of an article and website to examine to determine whether it’s actually something they want to cite or circulate.

There’s a wide variety of sites on your list.

The first category is sites that are created to deliberately spread false information. The 70news.wordpress.com site that was at the top of Google News searches about election results is an example. We don’t really know the intent of some false websites — whether they crop up to generate advertising revenue, or to simply troll people or for comedy purposes — but they all belong to one category: blatantly false.

The second category is websites or news organizations that usually have a kernel of truth to them, relying on an actual event or a real quote from a public official, but the way the story is contextualized (or not at all contextualized) tends to be misrepresentative of what actually happened. They may not be entirely false — there may be elements of “truthiness” to them — but they’re certainly misleading.

The third category I’ve used included websites whose reporting is OK, but their Facebook distribution practices are unrepresentative of actual events because they’re relying on hyperbole for clicks.

This category has caused the most controversy and, well, been taken as offensive to some publications. Upworthy wasn’t happy about its inclusion on this list; neither was ThinkProgress, who I initially included because of its tendency to use clickbait in its Facebook descriptions. A number of websites—both liberal and conservative publications—have contacted me; one even threatened to file “criminal libel” against me, although I don’t think they know what that means.

These websites are especially troubling because people don’t actually read the actual stories — they often just share based on the headline. I had the Huffington Post on my list of 300 potential additions because they published an article on Monday with a headline that claimed Bernie Sanders could replace Donald Trump with a little-known loophole. The article itself was chastising people for sharing the story without actually clicking it, but so many people were sharing it like, “oh, there’s a chance!” An effort to teach media literacy ended up circulating information that was extremely misleading.

How much of the rise of fake or misleading news sites can be attributed to structural changes in media consumption wrought by Facebook?

Facebook has absolutely contributed to the echo chamber. By algorithmically giving us what we want, Facebook leads to these very different information centers based on how it perceives your political orientation. This is compounded by the prior existence of confirmation bias: People have a tendency to seek out information they already agree with, or that matches with their gut reaction. When we encounter information we agree with, it affirms our beliefs, and even when we encounter information we don’t agree with, it tends to strengthen our beliefs anyway. We’re very stubborn like that.

I haven’t studied this yet, but my assumption is that this trend toward fake news reinforces this confirmation bias and strengthens the echo chamber and the filter bubble. It’s not just the media, but this weird relationship between how the technology works, this proliferated media environment, and how humans engage psychologically and communicatively.

Facebook is currently struggling with how to address these structural causes. What are some potential solution? I recently read a story about how a group of Princeton University students created an open-source browser extension that separates legitimate news sources from phony ones.

We definitely need media literacy from a young age, but that’s a very delayed process. We can use technology to try to help the situation, but after I read that same article about the Facebook plugin, a reporter from the Boston Globe and I were trying to test it and it didn’t seem to work. I’m glad it’s open source; a lot of programmers had approached me about creating something that people worried about misinformation can actively work on.

But my concern is, ironically, because I’m going through these sources and passing judgment, that as we’re doing this on a structural scale, what will be built as a check and balance for whatever method we end up using? How can some technology solution dynamic enough and reactive enough so that, if a website improves, or one that has a good reputation goes off the rails, it’s able to adapt? What are the metrics by which we’re categorizing news sources?

This seems like a good case for editors, which Facebook has been dealing with for some time.

Some people argue that part of this problem of fake news is inherently connected to editorial trends in mainstream journalism, from consolidation to a greater emphasis on corporate profits. Editing isn’t inherently a safety measure of this technology, even if it’s clearly necessary.

While tech companies grapple with structural issues, what needs to be done to engender media literacy in our classrooms and, I suppose, in our households?

It starts with actually reading what we are sharing. And it’s hard! Look, I’m a professor of media and I’ve been guilty of seeing something posted by a friend I trust and sharing it. I’ve been complicit in this system. The first thing we need to do is get people to actually read what they’re sharing, and, if it’s too much trouble to do that, we’re going to have serious difficulty getting people to look up and evaluate their sources of information.

One of the best things people can do is police websites that are spam or fake on Facebook. But when someone asked me about engaging with people, my advice was “do so with your own risk.” I’ve had tons of trolls and hateful messages and comments since I made this Google Doc public. You have to be prepared to deal with that stuff if you’re even going to try to course-correct misinformation on the Web.

So what, in an ideal world, is the solution here? What’s the future you envision for a cheat sheet like yours?

I think librarians should rule the world! I’ve been approached by people about creating more durable and dynamic documents that can go through a rigorous process to determine how resources are included or excluded or categorized. It’s like trying to index the entire Internet, and it feels impossible, but if we could start holding a few of the major sources of misinformation accountable, that would be important to me.

Original article: 

This Critique of Fake Election News Is a Must-Read for All Democracy Lovers

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Um, where did all of the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice just go?

Many have agreed that President-elect Donald Trump has some questionable ideas when it comes to climate policy. Today, we get to add anthropomorphized gym sock O’Reilly and known cup goblin Starbucks to that list!

On Wednesday’s episode of The O’Reilly Factor, he advised Trump on a number of items to consider as he prepares to take office. On this list:

“Finally, President-Elect Trump should accept the Paris treaty on climate to buy some goodwill overseas. It doesn’t really amount to much anyway, let it go.”

Well, the thing is, it does actually amount to a lot.

Here’s a confusing screenshot, because this action item appears under the heading “What President Obama Failed to Do,” when President Obama did, in fact, succeed in accepting the Paris Agreement.

On Thursday morning, a coalition of 365 major companies and investors submitted a plea to Trump to please, come on, just support the goddamn Paris Agreement, because to do otherwise would be a disastrous blow to the United States’ economic competitiveness. The list includes Starbucks (the nerve!!!!), eBay, Kellogg, and Virgin.

Anyway, Trump’s whole “refusing to acknowledge climate change” thing seems like a bad look.

See the original article here:  

Um, where did all of the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice just go?

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Flint still doesn’t have safe drinking water.

Many have agreed that President-elect Donald Trump has some questionable ideas when it comes to climate policy. Today, we get to add anthropomorphized gym sock O’Reilly and known cup goblin Starbucks to that list!

On Wednesday’s episode of The O’Reilly Factor, he advised Trump on a number of items to consider as he prepares to take office. On this list:

“Finally, President-Elect Trump should accept the Paris treaty on climate to buy some goodwill overseas. It doesn’t really amount to much anyway, let it go.”

Well, the thing is, it does actually amount to a lot.

Here’s a confusing screenshot, because this action item appears under the heading “What President Obama Failed to Do,” when President Obama did, in fact, succeed in accepting the Paris Agreement.

On Thursday morning, a coalition of 365 major companies and investors submitted a plea to Trump to please, come on, just support the goddamn Paris Agreement, because to do otherwise would be a disastrous blow to the United States’ economic competitiveness. The list includes Starbucks (the nerve!!!!), eBay, Kellogg, and Virgin.

Anyway, Trump’s whole “refusing to acknowledge climate change” thing seems like a bad look.

Taken from: 

Flint still doesn’t have safe drinking water.

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Richard Branson Describes “Bizarre” Lunch in Which Donald Trump Waxed About Revenge

Mother Jones

As our own David Corn noted just this week, Donald Trump loves nothing more than seeking cold revenge. It turns out billionaire Richard Branson has a Trump story that illustrates Trump’s obsession with vengeance perfectly.

Branson, the billionaire owner of the Virgin Group, wrote a post on his company’s website on Friday afternoon describing an out-of-the-blue lunch the two men shared “some years ago.” Branson says it was the first time he and Trump had met, but Trump had only one topic he wanted to discuss.

Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people.

He didn’t speak about anything else and I found it very bizarre. I told him I didn’t think it was the best way of spending his life. I said it was going to eat him up, and do more damage to him than them. There must be more constructive ways to spend the rest of your life. (Hopefully my advice didn’t lead to him running for President!)

I was baffled why he had invited me to lunch solely to tell me this. For a moment, I even wondered if he was going to ask me for financial help. If he had, I would have become the sixth person on his list!

Branson wrote earlier this month that “Mr Trump’s temperament is irrational and aggressive,” and added on Friday that those character defects are perhaps the scariest part of this election. “What concerns me most, based upon my personal experiences with Donald Trump, is his vindictive streak, which could be so dangerous if he got into the White House,” Branson wrote.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.

Continued: 

Richard Branson Describes “Bizarre” Lunch in Which Donald Trump Waxed About Revenge

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Greenpeace Shows How Many Companies Are Failing to Ban Microbeads

Microbeads are bad news, but fortunately most of us know that by now. There has been growing resistance to the miniscule pieces of plastic, added to personal care products for their ability to exfoliate skin, or sometimes just to look pretty in a see-through bottle. These microbeads, however, wreak environmental havoc as soon as theyre washed down the drain. The outcome is described here by campaign group Beat the Microbead:

Wastewater treatment plants are not designed to filter out microbeads and that is the main reason why, ultimately, they contribute to the Plastic Soup swirling around the worlds oceans. Sea creatures absorb or eat microbeads. These microbeads are passed along the marine food chain. Since humans are ultimately at the top of this food chain, it is likely that we are also absorbing microbeads from the food we eat. Microbeads are not biodegradable and once they enter the marine environment, they are impossible to remove.

After learning that microplastics have been found in 170 types of seafood, Greenpeace East Asia decided to take action. It launched a survey of 30 of the worlds largest cosmetics and personal care companies, assessing four main criteria:

1) Whether or not these companies have a commitment on microbeads, and whether its publicly accessible and easy to read
2) How microbeads are defined for the companys commitment
3) When the company plans to meet its deadline for the commitment
4) Whether the commitment covers all of the companys products

The result is theMicrobeads Commitment Scorecard, available as anoverviewandin greater detail. Companies such as Beiersdorf (owner of Nivea and Eucerin), Colgate-Palmolive, L Brands (La Senza, Victorias Secret, Bath & Body Works), and Henkel (Schwarzkopf and Persil) all scored highest in relation to the other companies; however, all of these top-scorers exhibit microbead commitments that fall short of an acceptable standard, mostly because of their definition of microbeads is too narrow and may allow for other, insoluble plastic polymers to be used in products.

At the very bottom of list, in the fail category, lie brands such as Revlon, Este Lauder (MAC), and Amway. The first two have not stated dates for phasing out microbeads and all continue to use plastics in their skin care products.

The good news? You dont need these brands and their nasty plastic pollution (nor the chemicals that will continue to exist in their products, even if they do get around the banning microbeads.)

There are great alternatives out there that use all-natural, plastic-free ingredients to exfoliate your skin. Some that you may want to investigate are Celtic ComplexionsGentle Creme Exfoliant(very luxurious and made with jojoba beads),Ethiques Gingersnap Facial Scrub Bars(they smell like cookies), and Fable NaturalsQuinoa & Almond Fresh Skin Exfoliant(made with organic oats and almonds).

Written by KatherineMartinko.This post originally appeared onTreeHugger.

Photo Credit: Beat the Microbead/Facebook

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Continued here:  

Greenpeace Shows How Many Companies Are Failing to Ban Microbeads

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