We love glitter to make our crafts, for special events and even in our baths, however we also know glitter tends to get into places where it isn’t wanted. One of the places we want to avoid is our water courses. Depending on your region, not all water systems are filtered, if these microplastics are flushed they can make their way to the ocean, adding more plastic to the pollution problem.

Keeping the Oceans clean starts at home!

Crafting

As a crafter you can use a sweeping brush and vacuum cleaner to remove most of the glitter. For those last few bits of sparkle, you could use a lint roller. We recommend avoiding the use of water when cleaning up glitter but if you have to then you can use a coffee filter to collect the glitter and bin/trash it.

Cosmetics

A soak in the bath after a long day of hard work is always made better with a glitter bath bomb. You can add something as simple as coffee filter over your plug hole before running the water so the glitter is caught as it drains. Even if the water drains slower when you pull the plug it will catch the glitter before it has chance to flow down the drain.

With the water drained you may have a glittery bath tub but this is easy to clean. Don’t rinse it down the drain, instead, you can use a paper towel or a wet wipe to easily wipe the residual glitter away. As with wet wipes, this should be disposed of in the bin/trash.

When applying facial and body glitter we recommend you do so by adding it to cosmetic peel off glue, it is easily removed and binned/trashed. If you’ve glittered your hair and face for the summer events, jumping in a shower will just send the glitter flowing down the drain. You can remove the majority or all of the look beforehand and you could use a filter paper over the drain hole.

1. Hair Glitter

Running a fine comb through your hair before showering will remove the larger pieces of glitter. For any smaller pieces you can spray hair spray onto a tissue and once it has become tacky pat or run your hair through it to collect the smaller pieces of glitter before disposing in the bin/trash.

2. Make-up glitter

The best way to remove the sparkle from your face is by adding any type of face oil to a cotton pad and wiping away the glitter. The glitter will stick to the oil and become easy to remove and binned/trashed. Our recommendation would be to add glitter to cosmetic peel off glue when using in make-up for it to be thrown away and kept from our water systems.Try remove as much glitter as possible before showering, if you have the option we recommend bathing and following the previous advice by using cosmetic peel off glues. The less glitter we wash away, the more we are helping to reduce pollution.

Paint Additives

If you are following popular trends, you might have thought about adding a glitter accent wall to your room. When cleaning excess glitter paint from brushes and roller trays, we would highly recommend using a bowl of warm soapy water and using filter paper when pouring the water away. The filter paper will catch the glitter which can be disposed of separately. Once the glitter has dried into position it becomes permanently embedded and solidified with its paint counterpart.

Grout Additives

When it comes to the clean up of your grouting tools we recommend following our previous advice by using a soapy bucket of water to clean your tools before pouring that water through a coffee filter to catch any remaining glitter. The typical advice for dealing with excess grout is to pour it into a pile outside for it to be picked up and disposed when it hardens. Since it has glitter in it, pour your excess into a bin liner to harden instead. You don’t want any glitter running off into outside drainage or getting through to subsurface water as the grout hardens. Once your new grout has hardened into position the glitter is permanently embedded and solidified with its grout counterpart.

Polyurethane & Epoxy Additives

When working with resins we recommend following the generic advice for disposing of excess resin. Let the glitter resin cure in a container or bin liner before disposal. Once the resin has cured the glitter is permanently embedded deep within the resin and poses no risk of running into watercourses. Cleaning your resin tools can be done with a stiff metal or plastic scraper, with the epoxy warm and less viscous you can scrape the excess into a container. The glitter resin residue can be cleaned with a lacquer thinner, acetone or alcohol. It is important not to pour this away as these chemicals can melt plastic piping, instead use tissue to soak it up and throw it in the bin/trash. Remember to wear the appropriate PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) such as gloves and goggles when working with chemicals.