Micro beads have been a well kept secret for years, but now their future is threatened and about time too.

Unknowingly we have all been using them in our daily lives and it’s only recently that we have understood the harm they do to other life forms.

They are minute pieces of a variety of plastics, ranging in size from 10 micrometers (0.00039 inches) to one millimetre (0.039 inches). They are very, very small. They’re generally also very round, so they act like minute ball bearings, making the solutions that contain them particularly creamy, smooth and easily spread.

The range of products using them surprised me, and I suspect that I’m not alone. They’ve been part of body rubs, shower gels, household cleansing products, sun creams, lotions, deodorants, many forms of make-up and toothpaste for some years now, and there are trillions of them.

Finally countries and manufacturing companies, as well as large stores, have begun to ban them now that they realise that one shower can result in 100,000 plastic particles entering the sea – part of the daily 20,000,000,000,000 (20 trillion) total. They pass straight through the drainage and sewage works to provide over 90 per cent of the plastic that contaminates beaches and oceans, and kills life forms that mistake them for tasty morsels.

M&S, Sainsbury, Asda and Waitrose have banned them from their own products and they are now forbidden in the United States and countries such as the Netherlands, Ireland and Sweden.

The UK only plans to ban them in personal use products this year, though if plastic bags are an indication they’ll give the companies involved excessive time to find suitable replacements.

The choice is impressive with rice, apricot seeds, walnut shells, and willow bark just some of the natural alternatives, and all equally as effective as oil based plastic.