Beat the Microbead
With this app you can check if your cosmetics contain plastic ingredients.
The Beat the Microbead app is the fastest way to learn if your cosmetics and personal care products contain plastic ingredients. This app uses state-of-the-art text recognition technology. Just scan the ingredients of your products and check them for microplastics. Not only that, but you can also get to know microplastic-free brands certified by us.How does it work?It’s straightforward: you can scan products with four easy steps:- Find the ingredients list on your product.- Position the full list within your camera frame.- Make sure the ingredients are clear to read.- Take a picture to scan!A traffic light rating system- RED: Products that contain microplastics.- ORANGE: Products that contain what we call “sceptical” microplastics. With this, we mean synthetic polymers for which there is not enough information available.- GREEN: Products that do not contain microplastics.Help us enrich our database!Every time you add a product to our database, you help us build a case against microplastics. With every product information, we can create evidence and convince authorities about the extensive use of plastic ingredients. A bit of extra effort on your side makes you a part of the fight against microplastics in cosmetics and care products. So, go ahead, scan the barcode of your product and help us get some more information!By adding the products to our database, you can also discover our certified microplastic-free brands. These brands have their entire range of products free of all known microplastic ingredients.Why is it important?Plastic in cosmetics is a global problem! Microplastics are hardly visible ingredients that pollute our planet & may pose health risks. These microplastics, hardly visible to the naked eye, flow straight from the bathroom drain into the sewer system. Microplastics are not biodegradable, and once they enter the (marine) environment, they are almost impossible to remove.Sea animals absorb or eat microplastics; these particles are passed along the marine food chain. Since humans are ultimately at the top of this food chain, it is likely that we also ingest microplastics.Using body washes or cosmetics that contain microplastics can put the ocean, ourselves, and our children at risk! With this app, you can get aware of this issue and make environmentally friendly choices.Who is behind this app?The collaborators behind this app include the following partners:Plastic Soup Foundation: NGO based in Amsterdam, initiators of the worldwide campaign “Beat the Microbead”. Their mission: No plastic in our water or our bodies!PINCH: a renowned mobile development agency from Amsterdam that is proud of their work for the Plastic Soup Foundation.A small update, so that the app works even better. Your feedback about the app is welcome and we try to include as much as possible in next updates.
The Beat the Microbead app is the fastest way to learn if your cosmetics and personal care products contain plastic ingredients. This app uses state-of-the-art text recognition technology. Just scan the ingredients of your products and check them for microplastics. Not only that, but you can also get to know microplastic-free brands certified by us.How does it work?It’s straightforward: you can scan products with four easy steps:- Find the ingredients list on your product.- Position the full list within your camera frame.- Make sure the ingredients are clear to read.- Take a picture to scan!A traffic light rating system- RED: Products that contain microplastics.- ORANGE: Products that contain what we call “sceptical” microplastics. With this, we mean synthetic polymers for which there is not enough information available.- GREEN: Products that do not contain microplastics.Help us enrich our database!Every time you add a product to our database, you help us build a case against microplastics. With every product information, we can create evidence and convince authorities about the extensive use of plastic ingredients. A bit of extra effort on your side makes you a part of the fight against microplastics in cosmetics and care products. So, go ahead, scan the barcode of your product and help us get some more information!By adding the products to our database, you can also discover our certified microplastic-free brands. These brands have their entire range of products free of all known microplastic ingredients.Why is it important?Plastic in cosmetics is a global problem! Microplastics are hardly visible ingredients that pollute our planet & may pose health risks. These microplastics, hardly visible to the naked eye, flow straight from the bathroom drain into the sewer system. Microplastics are not biodegradable, and once they enter the (marine) environment, they are almost impossible to remove.Sea animals absorb or eat microplastics; these particles are passed along the marine food chain. Since humans are ultimately at the top of this food chain, it is likely that we also ingest microplastics.Using body washes or cosmetics that contain microplastics can put the ocean, ourselves, and our children at risk! With this app, you can get aware of this issue and make environmentally friendly choices.Who is behind this app?The collaborators behind this app include the following partners:Plastic Soup Foundation: NGO based in Amsterdam, initiators of the worldwide campaign “Beat the Microbead”. Their mission: No plastic in our water or our bodies!PINCH: a renowned mobile development agency from Amsterdam that is proud of their work for the Plastic Soup Foundation.A small update, so that the app works even better. Your feedback about the app is welcome and we try to include as much as possible in next updates.
Read trusted reviews from application customers
Useful tool and definitely help the app by scanning the product and adding the name of products and what body part it's used for. Helps them create a database.
This app has good potential to call out the greenwashing by brands. I wasn't aware that Colgate, Oral B toothpastes which we are using since ages have microplastics in it. It's time to change to the real eco-friendly brands.
Please promote it more. Extra nice app. Will scan everytjing I can, if I could.
The app has an amazing potential to do the good!! It would be amazing if it worked properly. I scanned many products, and I think I've learned many things about ingredients. It has been more than two months since I input a product in the database, it's crashing. I'm just keeping the app to continue checking the ingredients of the products before I buy them. I think it would also be very good if the user could login inside the app and have a list about all the products he/she had already input.
I very much like the concept of the app, but it is not reliable. I scanned a screenshot of an ingredient list retrieved from a manufacturers website, clearly stating ingredients such as acrylic copolymer, polyester polymer etc which are listed as micro plastics on the btmb website, but the app told me everything was fine. It did detect pvp in another product though.
I like it. I wish the links they have in the information for sites where to buy products had products sold not in euros only but dollar currency as well. Bring diversity in currency for whoever comes to use this app. Got to add more websites or website with diverse currency if one wished to buy the products without microplastics.
The app is not consistent at all. I've scanned multiple products over and over again. And the app keeps changing its mind. Even though it is very clear that a product contains microplastics, it doesn't recognize it either.
Scanning product ingredients works well. Suggestion: hope there will be an option where we can see/save all the products we scanned.
It's a great app
This app has changed my life. I had no idea how much toxic plastic I was putting on my families skin.