A nursery chain is to ban children from using glitter because of fears about the damage it causes to the environment.

The substance loved by youngsters for making Christmas cards and other crafts is being removed by Tops Day Nurseries, a chain of 19 centres in southern England.

It comes amid mounting concern globally about the effects of plastics on marine wildlife – and just weeks after viral images emerged of a fish forced to grow around a plastic bottle wrapper, leading to calls for consumers to “pick up your garbage”.

Tops’ managing director Cheryl Hadland said she made the decision after realising glitter is a microplastic which can harm the environment.

“You can see when the children are taking their bits of craft home and there’s glitter on the cardboard, it blows off and into the air and on to the road, and it’s only a tiny little bit, but we’ve got 3,000 children and they’re all doing Christmas craft at the moment, so we’ve got glitter everywhere.

Read the full article on The Irish Independent website here