Nowadays, there is no free shining, no Instagram post or fashion show is complete. But the question revolves around its environmental impact-and its role in child slavery. Is it time to stop?

Last modified on Monday, July 2, 2018 at 09.50 EDT

Last year was the best and worst time for shining. New York Magazine’s fashion magazine The Cut declared: “In 2017, there weren’t too many flashes like this.” The manager of a London bar agreed, adding flashes to its Christmas dinner gravy and declared it to “spread holiday joy.” The perfect way". "Teen Vogue" gives the secret of how to become a "shiny newcomer" on New Year's Eve, from using shiny hair roots to turn hair into "disco ball" eyelids. At London Fashion Week, designer Ashish Gupta sent a model onto the runway with the words: "More glitter, less tweet", which was a sharp jab on Donald Trump.

In the digital realm, the shining tongue wave swept through Instagram, causing people to worry about people swallowing it, and artist Sara Shakeel became popular with Photoshop collages, in which she used flashes to embellish stretch marks. From makeup artist Pat McGrath to model Bella Hadid, an app called Kirakira makes Instagram posts look like the inside of a snowball, becoming an important accessory in the fashion industry. This is a shining year.

But this is not all fun and "gram". When a flash of light entered her eyeballs, a woman in Swansea was almost blinded by a Christmas card. According to the company behind it, this product called Passion Dust Intimacy Capsules has aroused strong opposition, which is designed to fill the vagina with "magic". "Don't let your vagina shine," warned gynecologist Jen Gunter.

For some people, flash has never been of much use-comedian Dmitry Martin summed it up perfectly a few years ago, when he called flash the "herpes of the craft world." Its lingering qualities allow forensic scientists to use it as evidence and make it popular with activists such as LGBT activist Nick Espinosa, who dumped it in 2011 American politician Newt Gingrich (Newt Gingrich), and said: "Feel the rainbow, Newt!"

Recently, however, Flash has received the most criticism for being environmentally unfriendly. Out of concerns about ocean plastic pollution, a group of nurseries in southern England banned 2,500 children from using glitter before Christmas, while New Zealand social scientist Dr. Trisia Farrelly and others called for a ban on glitter. The plastic flashes completely.

Most flashes are made by bonding etched aluminum and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a microplastic that can enter our oceans and the creatures that make them home. Alice Horton, a research assistant at the British Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said that although "there is currently no clear evidence that flash is harmful to the environment," "research on flash may show results similar to other studies. Microplastics."

Earlier this month, the United Kingdom banned the use of microbeads in cosmetics and personal care products, including some glitter types used in rinse-off cosmetics. A similar ban in the United States in 2015 only applied to exfoliating products. But, even the British ban will definitely leave a lot of sparks that can enter the sea (and our marine fish)? Dr. Richard Thompson, a marine biologist at the University of Plymouth, led a research project in 2016 that found microplastics in one-third of the fish caught in the UK. Not an alarm".

Although reducing plastic emissions into our environment is important, he said, "It's about looking at these things in perspective." Compared to, for example, the number of food and beverage packages left on the beach, flashing may only account for a small portion of the plastic waste that enters our environment.

"If it is used in flushing products, then you would think: why does it need to be there?" Thompson said. "If it is glued to the card, I won't worry so much." Your sparkling Christmas card does not pose a direct risk to the mackerel, and it does not make the task of sucking its spots from the carpet more interesting. , But it does exist.

Noemi Lamanna uses sequins every day and she is worried about it. "Finding that kind of glitter, we really like and have a lot of things, it's plastic, it's heartbreaking," she recalled. She became a sparkling activist, telling anyone willing to listen to its dirty little secrets. Then, about a year ago, she and her best friend founded a company called Eco Glitter Fun. "We started trading in April," she said. "People's interest in our flash products has grown exponentially."

Stephen Cotton is a chemical engineer who helped create Bio-glitter, a more environmentally friendly alternative sold by Lamanna. Does he like these things? "It's okay," he said. He said that his product replaced PET with cellulose derived from trees or plant matter (mainly eucalyptus). He promised that it sparkled like ordinary flashes.

Mica is another material touted as a plastic-based flash replacement, at least in some applications. A natural mineral whose tiny particles give off a pearly shimmer next to the shimmering, more brazen luster, making it ideal for makeup. But the road to glory has never been smooth—the world’s main source of mica is illegal mines in India, where at least 20,000 children are believed to work. Entering synthetic mica, also known as synthetic fluorophlogopite, high street cosmetics chain Lush started using it after realizing the problem with natural mica. As of January 1, all its products are free of natural mica.

But the mica grown in the laboratory is not the solution that Jakub Sobik, the spokesperson of the International Anti-Slavery Organization, hopes all corporate giants will adopt. "Not all mica companies are involved in the exploitation of children. People's livelihoods depend on it. So you want to see things improve, not the entire industry shutting down."

Aysel Sabahoglu, a child rights officer at the rescue agency Terre des Hommes (TDH), can point out that since a series of media reports on this situation have been published, some improvements in the natural mica industry have come from the responsible mica initiative, which was organized by about 40 companies. The company, from L'Oreal to Chanel, to the "child-friendly village" where TDH works. The idea is that children will “know their rights and know how to fight for them”. If the supply chain can be cleaned up, maybe the day of natural mica will come?

Maybe the attractiveness of the flash will fade. But considering that our love for flash can be traced back to the time of Cleopatra, this seems unlikely. According to a group of Belgian scientists, they looked for clues from evolution in 2014 to explain our attraction to shiny things, which illustrates something we are born with-our attraction to water. Our Paleolithic ancestors used mica flakes in their cave paintings, and Neanderthal cosmetics have been found to contain reflective black mineral spots. As Ramana said: "Apply sequins on it, the effect will be better. It will shine all day."