MICA-THE MAGIC INGREDIENT
We all love to look pretty, and so we go for a stroke of eyeliner, a little blush on our cheek, a touch of lip gloss to give that extra shine, and the cosmetic the industry survives on that glamour.
Although most of us carry our little bags of beauty products, how many of us have heard about Mica, the mineral that gives all the sparkle?
Mica is one of the primary mineral ingredients used in cosmetics, making these products glitter and attractive. It is also used in other common products like electronics, insulation, paint, and even toothpaste. The dark side attached to this mineral is that children mine it under life-threatening situations and those little lives are the hidden cost behind all this glamour. Have we ever imagined such cruelty is attached to these beauty products?
THE DARKNESS BEHIND THE GLITTER
The majority of the world’s mica comes from Jharkhand in India, and in 2016 Thomson Reuters Foundation, through its investigation, has brought forward the fact into light that this mineral, Mica, is mined by children at a deadly cost.
Children even from the age of four are risking their lives working in these mines run by illicit operators and carry heavy loads of these minerals mixed with gravel and then separates Mica from them, which is then sold and exported overseas.
These children who work under dangerous working conditions are prone to the dangers of cuts, broken bones, and many respiratory illnesses that can damage their lungs.
Many children have even lost their lives due to heavy debris falling on them. Even though these areas are rich in Mica and other minerals, yet it has one of the country’s highest poverty rates. These kids and their families have no other option to earn a decent living, and despite all these efforts, they still struggle to make both ends meet as they are not being paid decent wages for all their efforts. On an estimation, around 20,000 children are working in mines over the region, and various investigations have reported that approximately 10 to 20 deaths occur in a month in these mining sites.
Once the Mica leaves these mines, they are channeled into a process that covers up the fact that these children were involved in this at all. Traders take this Mica to intermediaries who often sell this mineral under a legal mine license from another part of the country. By the time the Mica is shipped overseas, this mineral’s illicit origins will be stripped away.
CHILD LABOUR
CHILD-FRIENDLY VILLAGE
Solutions from the top levels would be slow to reach these families; however, efforts are being made on the ground, which provides some hope for these lives. The Kailash Satyarthi Foundation has formulated a concept called ‘Child-Friendly Village’, connecting parents to new income sources so that these children need not go to work. More than 3000 children have been rescued from child labor through this initiative and are enrolled in schools. Funding comes from government services and private business sectors, including Estee Lauder one of the world’s leading beauty and health care companies.
This unregulated nature of Mica causes dangerous work conditions and exorbitant pricing. Lush Cosmetics, the British Company, has taken various initiatives against this controversial ingredient and have even stopped using Mica in their products. They say that they don’t want any ingredient going into any Lush product which had death and cruelty associated with it. There has to be some other ethical way for mining mica, and a transparent supply chain shall emerge. It is quite hard to believe that this glowing, radiant shimmer in our makeup products have tears and pain of children linked with it.