You can all rejoice because scientists want to ban this craft supply from hell

Ding! Dong! The witch is dead! Which old witch? The GLITTER witch! (and no we're not talking about you, Mariah Carey; you're a glitter queen, girl, not a witch. We love you. Merry Christmas.)

Scientists in the UK have called for a ban on the sticky shimmery flecks, and for a good reason too—turns out, they're awful for the environment.

Every parent who's ever done a craft with kids knows that glitter is the clingy ex of craft supplies. It just won't. Go. Away. And it's exactly that ability to stick and stay stuck to anything that makes glitter so bad for the planet.

Glitter particles are microplastics, which are defined as pieces of plastic that measure less than 5 milliemetres in length. These microplastics don't just get stuck on your hands, in your hair and all over your couch, but they find their way into the ocean where they're super dangerous for animals who mistake them for food (and if the fish we eat are consuming glitter, we're consuming glitter).

We'll admit that many of our crafts use glitter because glitter makes things really pretty and shiny, and a world without glitter would be pretty dull.

But this is our planet we're talking about here, and if we want kids to not live in the post-apocalyptic worlds of hundreds of YA novels, maybe getting rid of glitter is a step towards a green future and a clean(er) house.

If anything, this will hopefully force the creation of more sustainable non-plastic glitter that won't get trapped in the dog's fur for five years. For now, maybe we'll just gonna toss all our glitter to the wind—figuratively, of course.

This article was originally published online in November 2017.