So my boyfriend of all people takes a look at one of my six million jars of various exfoliants in the bathroom and goes, "Yo, you know this stuff's bad for the environment, right?" "Uh, are you kidding?" I ask, because you know, I have been conscientiously toting my highly reusable macramé bag to schlep my dolphin-safe tuna home from Whole Foods all week and jeez, what a hypocrite would I be if I were killing dolphins with my butt scrub all along?

Apparently, he read somewhere that the run off from these grains was choking plankton or something. My highly scholarly research (a.k.a. Google) found little scholarly literature to back up this somewhat unspecific claim (but hey, the man drinks a bit here and there). However, I did find an article published in Orion, in which marine biologist Richard Thompson gets agro about synthetic exfoliants found in beauty products. Turns out, polyethylene (plastic) beads found in many products wash right down the drain, into sewers that flow into rivers that eventually deliver the bits of toxic plastic to the ocean, where marine life ingests them. Jesusmaryandjoseph! I feel so misled. Ditch the fish killer and try safer alternatives: St. Ives Apricot Scrub, $4, (uses ground up jojoba seed and walnut shells; better for body than face though, more on that later); Astara Daily Refining Scrub, $37, ("fine siliceous earth" probably won't choke a starfish); and my personal fave, Dermalogica Daily Microfoliant, $48 (a miraculous rice bran concoction). Saving marine life, one beauty product at a time.