Our Blog

Back to Blog

Does Bioglitter™ contain aluminium, and if so, how can it still be called biodegradable?

Helpful Information, Product Information

The reflective aluminium layer in Bioglitter™ SPARKLE and Bioglitter™ HOLO products has been optimised to be as thin as possible, 2500 times thinner than a human hair!

Aluminium is a metal that’s found in the natural world, it’s the most abundant metal in Earth’s crust.  Like water and minerals, metals are inorganic, meaning they don’t contain carbon.  Only organic* substances have the potential to biodegrade.  Inorganic compounds, do not contain carbon and therefore exempt from the biodegradability performance of a material.  Bioglitter™ consists of mostly organic material, that’s independently proven to biodegrade extremely well in the natural environment.

Of course if a glitter was made from 100% aluminium it would not be biodegradable.  However, in the case of Bioglitter™ products the aluminium content is negligible, the vast majority of the content being biodegradable and therefore why Bioglitter™’s fresh water biodegradability performance is market leading.

Biodegradability tests evaluate how well organic materials biodegrade in a environment particular to a specific test… how long, how much in a specific environment.  Typical test environments increasing in difficulty to pass; Industrial Composting ⇒ Home Composting ⇒ Soil ⇒ Fresh Water.

Microplastic is the concern with glitter, ie organic polymers that don’t biodegrade in the natural environment, up at fresh water level of performance.

*Organic – means carbon containing.  Not to be confused with the term ‘organic’ that’s used to market or communicate that a vegetable, for example, has been produced or involving production without the use of chemical fertilizerspesticides, or other artificial chemicals.