Beauty is Pain – for the Environment

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

Most of the products being used have a deep and complicated impact on the environment and on the world. One such material is Mica, which is used in many products, practically every product with a glittery appearance. Mica mining leads to environmental issues like deforestation, erosion and habitat loss.

But the negative impacts of the resource are not just limited to the mining of it, with it producing micro-beads that invade marine ecosystems. Micro-beads, unlike their name, have a huge impact on the environment and studies like the one done by “Environmental Science Technology”, have found that there are 8 trillion beads released into the environment every day in the United States. Mica mining is not only bad for the environment, but it is also extremely hazardous when not properly regulated.

Over the years many different ideas have been proposed and implemented to try and fix this issue, but none of them are perfect.

One of the proposed “solutions” to the issue was to make mica mining illegal. This idea was actually implemented in India, which is still one of the largest mica suppliers. Its continued production should be a sign that the illegalization has not really made a difference, and if anything made things worse. Now mica mining is done illegally which means mines go unregulated and workers are paid even less than when it was legal. These illegal mines for mica have horrible impacts on the communities they are in, besides the environmental degradation impacting them, they also have injuries and deaths related to mining incidents and the amount of children being educated is also less.

Image credits to MyEyeSees. License found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Since the mines are illegal, safety is not a priority and the workers are poor citizens, often children, with no other choice but to accept these jobs. When the mines inevitably collapse from mismanagement, the deaths and injuries go unreported. Many of the workers in these illegal mica mines are children, as young as five, widely due to the size of the tunnels. These children miss school, which means they will have a harder time finding higher paying jobs to help their community in the future.

Another reason illegalizing mica mining doesn't really solve the issue is that it fails to prevent the inhumane mining conditions and instead often leads to paying the miners less. This is because the mica now has to be sold under the table. This also leads customers buying beauty products to believe they are buying ethically sourced materials, but in reality they are not.

Another proposed option is simply replacing the mica in beauty products with a synthetic replacement. Synthetic mica does not impact the environment as much as mining does because it does not require a large amount of land degradation. It moves the production of mica from dangerous mines to labs, but this isn't a foolproof plan, as it still has large downsides.

For one thing, synthetic mica is very costly which means brands are not keen to make the switch. Additionally, the majority of synthetic mica is produced in China and Japan and still must be exported which has its own harmful impacts on the planet. The manufacturing of the mica itself also negatively affects the employees that work in the factories. According to the “Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine”, employees in these factories breathe in harsh dust particles that could have negative health effects.

This replacement of real mica also means the already impoverished miners lose out on income, and unfortunately many of the communities in which mica mining happens are dependent on the mines to make a living. They also are unable to break from the cycle when their futures, their children, are out of school working in dangerous mines instead.

Although these solutions seem to solve some issues, they don't actually solve the problem as a whole. These proposals are only skin deep; each one leaves parts of the problem untouched and often amplifies the issues with mica. Despite what some may try and make you think, there isn't going to be just one solution that magically fixes each and every negative aspect of mica mining. The issue of mica is a complex problem that deserves a complex and multifaceted solution. So until a better solution is found, consumers should vote with our dollars to show what we want, as hard as resisting the glittery shades may be.