Science Friday

Glitter Gets An Eco-Friendly Glimmer

Glitter—it’s everywhere this time of year. You open up a holiday card, and out comes a sprinkle of it. And that glitter will seemingly be with you forever, hugging your sweater, covering the floor. But glitter doesn’t stop there. It washes down the drain, and travels into the sewage system and waterways. Since it's made from microplastics, it’s never going away.

As it turns out, all that glitters is not gold—or even biodegradable.

But what if you could make glitter that was biodegradable? Silivia Vignolini, professor of chemistry at the University of Cambridge joins Ira to discuss her latest discovery—eco-glitter made from plant cellulose.

Another year is in the books. And whether you got out more this year or continued precautionary staying at home, we hope you at least got some good reading done.

If not, you still have a whole winter ahead, and SciFri has rounded up another batch of the year’s best books. On this year’s list, you’ll find enthralling tales of the deep ocean, a fun primer on how the immune system works, and a cosmologist’s view of how science can do better by those it’s excluded.

Ira Flatow rounds up more than a dozen favorite titles, with help from editors Valerie Thompson, of Science, and Stephanie Sendaula, of Library Journal.

Check out the list at sciencefriday.com.