Guide · 4 min read
How to cut microplastics from your bathroom routine
From microbeads to microfibre towels, the bathroom is quietly full of plastic that touches skin daily. The swaps are the easy kind.
The bathroom's microplastic story started with microbeads, plastic scrub particles washed straight down the drain by the trillions until scientists made the case for the US rinse-off cosmetics ban. What remains is subtler: liquid products in single-use bottles, polyester towels shedding in every wash, and disposable razors fused from plastic and steel. Every one of them has a better, older-fashioned replacement.
Solids instead of bottles
Bars now exist for every liquid in the shower: shampoo, conditioner, body wash and shave soap. They are the same chemistry without the bottle, they last longer per gram, and a bamboo shelf keeps them dry between uses.
The razor you never throw away
Disposable razors and cartridge heads are plastic by design and unrecyclable in practice. A stainless safety razor takes blades that cost pennies and recycle as plain steel, and it shaves at least as well once you slow down for a week.
Cotton where cotton belongs
Single-use makeup wipes and plastic-stemmed swabs are top-ten beach litter items. Washable cotton rounds and bamboo swabs do the same jobs, and a cotton towel sheds no plastic in the wash, unlike the microfibre kind.
Common questions
- Are microbeads still in products?
- The US banned plastic microbeads in rinse-off cosmetics, with sales ending by mid-2018, and many countries followed. Leave-on products and some categories elsewhere still use plastic ingredients, so it is worth scanning labels for polyethylene and acrylates copolymer.
- Is glitter a microplastic?
- Conventional glitter is cut plastic film, so cosmetic glitter is a microplastic by definition. Cellulose-based biodegradable glitter exists if sparkle is non-negotiable.
- Do bar products work for sensitive skin?
- Bar formats span the same range as liquids, from castile simplicity to dermatologist-formulated. Unscented castile soap is one of the shortest ingredient lists you can buy in any format.
Sources
- Scientific Evidence Supports a Ban on Microbeads · Environmental Science & Technology (ACS) (2015)
- Microplastics everywhere: Are we facing a new health crisis? · World Economic Forum (2025)
- What's the deal with microplastics, the material that 'never goes away'? · Stanford University (2025)
- Release of Synthetic Microplastic Fibres from Domestic Washing Machines · Marine Pollution Bulletin (2016)