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Comment by giarc | Hacker News Reader

I understand the need to phase out/in ingredients in this situation, however I've never understood when there is a simple ban on an unnecessary ingredient why it takes long. I'm specifically talking about those "microbeads" in bodywash that were banned a few years ago. The companies got years to phase them out. They served no real purpose and were not replaced with anything. Companies just had to stop adding them to the bodywash - why give them years to do so? I get that labelling would be inaccurate so give them a few months to change that.

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Of course the beads served a purpose: they were abrasive and exfoliating. And they were given time because they have to sell their existing inventory and use all the beads they already have purchased to put in their products.

Not sure why you're greyed out, because you're correct that those were literally exfoliant face washes. (No real loss in phasing them out because there are much better ways to exfoliate than rubbing your face with little pellets, but it wasn't some meaningless design choice.)

Sorry, yes I realize their purpose, but I meant the product still worked without them, so they could have stopped adding them and continue to sell the product. I guess the same is technically true for food dyes. I just mean that there are times where the ingredient is critical to the product, microbeads was not one of them.

With something like that it's tough, though, because they sold those as an _exfoliating wash_ product, but if you take away the beads it's not exfoliating anymore. So you'd either have to rebrand it to remove any mentions of exfoliation (at which point it becomes a totally different product) or rework the ingredients list to include a "chemical" exfoliant rather than the "physical" exfoliant (but that also drastically alters the product, especially since some people avoid chemical exfoliants).

Not defending microbeads—those products were truly shit, both for your skin and for the environment—I just want to illustrate that it might not be so straightforward.

I think we give these companies too much leeway. I live in Canada and there is a palpable hate on for American's following the "51st State" talk. This has led to increased patriotism and companies are cashing in. Within weeks, many retail products started to relabel and emphasize "Made In Canada". So it can be done, we shouldn't listen to them when they tell us "it's not that easy" because they've demonstrated it is easy when it means potentially more revenue.

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