You’re making a holiday card or craft. What might you reach for to make it sparkle? There’s just one answer for many kids. It’s glitter! It adds shine to decorations, nail polish, slime, and more!

Dannielle Green once loved using glitter too. She remembers using it as a kid. She added glitter to make her arts and crafts projects shimmer. But today, Green sees glitter in a much different light.

Green is an ecologist. That’s a scientist who studies how living and nonliving things act with one another. She knows glitter doesn’t just make a mess in the craft room. It also harms the environment.

Most glitter is made from plastic. That’s the same material used to make water bottles and toothbrushes. In fact, it’s used in most things you use in your daily life. Tiny specks of glitter can get washed down the drain. Then they pollute lakes and oceans. Plastic pollution is one of the most serious environmental issues. Humans toss out around 400 million tons of plastic a year!

So is it time to stop using glitter for good? Can we find a better way to sparkle?

Humans’ love of sparkle isn’t new. We’ve been using naturally shimmery materials for thousands of years. “People have always liked shiny things,” says Green. Ancient Egyptians crushed shiny beetles to create a glitter-like substance for their makeup. People also ground up mica, a type of rock, to make sparkly cave paintings.

The glitter we use today was invented in the 1930s by cattle rancher Henry Ruschmann. He had created a machine that could cut photo paper. Sometimes the machine messed up and cut the glossy film into tiny pieces. Ruschmann noticed when the scraps reflected light, they sparkled! He realized that the material was special, so he started a company to produce glitter.

Today most glitter is still made using Ruschmann’s method of grinding up sheets of plastic into small shimmery pieces. A glitter’s color and texture depends on how it’s processed. It might be coated with chemicals or cut to different sizes.

People’s love of sparkle isn’t new. We’ve used naturally shimmery materials for thousands of years. “People have always liked shiny things,” says Green. Ancient Egyptians crushed shiny beetles. That created a sparkly substance for their makeup. People also ground up mica. It’s a type of rock. They used it to make sparkly cave paintings.

The glitter we use today was created in the 1930s. Cattle rancher Henry Ruschmann invented it. He had made a machine that could cut photo paper. Sometimes the machine messed up. It cut the glossy film into tiny pieces. Ruschmann noticed the scraps reflected light. They sparkled! He realized the material was special. So he started a company to produce glitter.

Today most glitter is still made using Ruschmann’s method. Sheets of plastic are ground into small shimmery pieces. Glitter’s color and texture depends on how it’s made. It might be coated with chemicals. Or it might be cut to different sizes.

Glitter adds sparkle to crafts, clothes, makeup, and more. But it can get washed off or thrown away. Then it can cause problems.

Glitter is what scientists call a microplastic. That’s a piece of plastic smaller than 5 millimeters in length. That’s about the size of a sesame seed. These tiny pieces easily pass through the water filters in sewers. They then travel to rivers and streams. From there, they make their way into all kinds of places. That includes beaches and the deep ocean. (See Glitter’s Path to the Ocean.)

“The big problem with microplastics is that they don’t disappear,” says Green. Unlike paper, plastics take a very long time to break down. Scientists think they likely stay in the environment for hundreds of years or longer.

Small water-dwelling animals like fish and shrimp often eat microplastics. That can harm the animals’ health.

And the problem doesn’t stop there. Other animals eat these small aquatic critters. Then the microplastics get inside them too. Over time, microplastics can affect many of the living things in an ecosystem. That includes people.

Every material we use affects the planet, says Green. “It doesn’t just stop after we use it.”