[L]awmakers are looking to ban microbeads, barely visible plastic scrubbing grains used in personal care products, such as soaps and cleansers, from being sold in Vermont.
Environmentalists and water quality advocates want them outlawed because the non-biodegradable plastic waste is washed down the drain and slips through nearly all of the state’s wastewater treatment plants.
The House Fish and Wildlife Committee last week took up the bill, H.4, to prohibit the manufacture and sale of the products in Vermont, effective Jan. 1, 2017, and 2018, respectively. Illinois last year signed into law a similar ban on microbeads, but it takes effect one year later. The beads have been found in the Great Lakes.
Many manufacturers already use alternatives, such as ground nuts, oatmeal and pumice, and are not opposing the ban. However, they urge Vermont to pass regulations that align with those in Illinois, including postponing the proposed implementation date by one year.
Robert Fischer, chief operator at Montpelier’s wastewater treatment plant, said his plant can filter out only debris larger than six millimeters in size. Scientists says the microbeads are often smaller than five millimeters in size.
Of the 59 wastewater treatment plants that discharge into Lake Champlain, only five in the Burlington area use a cloth filtration to catch microbeads, Fischer said. The beads are then removed from the water with other sludge and either sent to the state’s landfill or applied to land as biosolid fertilizer, he said.
“The vast majority have no ability to filter it off, and for the ones that do, it would still be problematic” Fischer said.
No studies measure quantities of microbeads in Vermont’s waterways. But scientists who study Lake Champlain say the beads can be spotted along the shores — along with billions of pieces of other marine trash.
Microbeads pose harm to aquatic life, according to Lori Fisher, executive director of the Lake Champlain Committee, a lake advocacy group. She said fish feed on the buoyant beads, mistaking them for fish eggs.
“This can cause internal abrasions and blockages resulting in reduced food consumption, stunted growth and starvation. When plankton, mussels or fish fill up on plastic junk food they are likely to lose their appetite for healthier food,” she said.
Fisher and others say the microbeads attract toxic chemicals that can make their way up the food chain, through studies have not documented a risk to public health.
Rachael Miller, executive director of the Granville-based nonprofit Rozalia Project, a group of scientists who study marine trash, said pollutants attach themselves to the plastic beads like a sticker and can be carried through the food chain.
“The presence of this stuff has the potential to affect the ecosystems. And we are part of that ecosystem,” Miller said.
She said the beads are ubiquitous in urban waterways, but the problem is arguably one of the easiest to solve: Don’t wash the beads down the drain.
Mike Thompson of the Personal Care Products Council, a trade group that represents 600 cosmetic and personal care member companies, said the industry is planning to phase out microbeads from their products for competitive reasons.
“It is something our members started, and the industry is committed to phasing out microbeads on a timely basis,” Thompson said.
Martin Wolf, sustainability director at Seventh Generation, a Burlington-based manufacturer of environmental household products, said the company uses ground coconut shell in some of its products.
“Microbeads are nonessential. Substances exist that are mineral or biodegradable, perform the same function, and have no meaningful impact on the economics of the products in which they are used,” he told the Fish and Wildlife Committee.
He said alternatives include hardened seed kernels, crushed cocoa beans, ground coconut shells, oatmeal, calcium carbonate and silica. All of these materials are organic compounds that are biodegradable.
The Vermont Public Interest Research Group, an environmental advocacy group backing the ban, collected more than 1,000 signatures on a petition supporting a ban on microbeads.
In Vermont’s bill, manufacturing with microbeads would be banned beginning Jan. 1, 2017, and banned for sale the following year. Thompson suggested pushing back the regulations by one year to Dec. 31, 2017, to match Illinois’ regulations.
“We really look forward to having a commitment to phase out, but we can’t have 50 different sets of rules,” he said. “It’s not a position of any opposition … we are committed to removing microbeads from our products.”
Jim Harrison, president of the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association, said the industry understands that there are alternatives. He said he prefers a bill that gives retailers time to sell existing inventories and restock their shelves with alternative products.
Correction: There are 59 wastewater treatment plants that discharge into Lake Champlain, not 49 as a previous version said.
