Microplastics in personal care products: Exploring perceptions of environmentalists, beauticians and students

Microplastics enter the environment as a result of larger plastic items breaking down (‘secondary’) and from particles originally manufactured at that size (‘primary’). Personal care productsare an important contributor of secondary microplastics (typically referred to as ‘microbeads’), for example in toothpaste, facial scrubs and soaps. Consumers play an important role in influencing the demand for these products and therefore any associated environmental consequences. Hence we need to understand public perceptions in order to help reduce emissions of microplastics. This study explored awareness of plastic microbeads in personal care products in three groups: environmental activists, trainee beauticians and university students in South West England. Focus groups were run, where participants were shown the quantity of microbeads found in individual high-street personal care products. Qualitative analysis showed that while the environmentalists were originally aware of the issue, it lacked visibility and immediacy for the beauticians and students. Yet when shown the amount of plastic in a range of familiar everyday personal care products, all participants expressed considerable surprise and concern at the quantities and potential impact. Regardless of any perceived level of harm in the environment, the consensus was that their use was unnatural and unnecessary. This research could inform future communications with the public and industry as well as policy initiatives to phase out the use of microbeads

GLOBAL MOBILITY, SHIFTING BORDERS AND URBAN CITIZENSHIP

Global migration has reached historic levels affecting every single country in the world. One of the most significant effects of this heightened mobility has been that a growing proportion of the residents of migrant receiving places lack national citizenship and are thus deprived of effective sociopolitical inclusion, representation, and participation in the localities where they have moved to for work, refuge or retirement. This disjuncture between the spaces of citizenship and daily life, in turn, has led to a devolution of citizenship claims-making from national to urban space. This paper begins by identifying four key political economic developments operating at the global scale that have unsettled the established view of the close correspondence between nationhood and citizenship. It then focuses on the uses and limits of the increasingly voluble discourse on 'the right to the city' as a way to create alternative political spaces in which variously excluded groups of urban inhabitants might empower themselves. Three strikingly different examples of widely diverse group actions and state responses to illustrate the practical strengths and limits of 'the right to the city' discourse are narrated. We end by offering what we believe to be a more useful way to envisage and analyse the interplay between global mobility and urban citizenship. Copyright (c) 2009 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.