Beat the Microbead User Reviews

Stichting Plastic Soup Foundation

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Appallingly innacurate

Anyone in the skincare industry and product development will be laughing at the appalling innacuracy and lack of understanding of ingredients. Shockingly misleading as scaremongering!

Mod Bird

4 years ago

Awesome and educational!

An amazing app geared to helping the environment and helping keep plastic out of your products! Only improvements I can think of are that it would be nice to have a search bar to look for products if I don’t have them on hand with me to scan

GraceC97

4 years ago

Response from developer

Thanks for the great review Grace! Also for the feedback, this helps us to further improve the app.

Really gets you interested into what you use

I like this app that informs people about micro plastics and the overall harm. However I wish that when I scan the product and it comes up with the micro plastics that are in the product that it says a detailed description of why it is bad. Like a hyper link on the name or something because I find myself just googling them all after seeing it and it would be more informative and helpful if you used reliable sources on the names that appear. But I overall enjoy bringing light to the problem of micro plastics.

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cavylove

4 years ago

Response from developer

Hello Cavylove, Thank you for this wonderful review. We are taking in your feedback and we will see how we can incorporate this in the next update. Part of this information is available on our website. Have a look: https://www.beatthemicrobead.org/guide-to-microplastics/

Great for newbies, empowering!

As a product junkie, I was completely unaware that Microplastics were so widespread. Quick way to check all your products by photographing the ingredient list and slowly learning what ingredients to look out for. Feels great that I can also contribute to the database! I wish I could scan the barcode first and/or search for products however, but you can do that on their website.

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bulletproof79

4 years ago

Response from developer

Thanks for your review bulletproof79, your feedback helps improving the app. This is really something we're thinking about for a future update. Have a nice day!

Great scan recognition of my products

I was feeling iffy about what’s in my products and going on my body. I was reading an older National Geographic article about micro plastics and they mentioned this app. I tested it in my son’s bath bubble foam by taking a pic; it recognized and verified the ingredients as safe. Since it wasn’t in the database I added the product name and category. I feel like this is a great concept they worked hard on and we should all do our part to use it to start cutting back on products that contribute to the microplastic problem. We should all try to scan and update products into the database. There’s millions of products out there, so it’s understandable we won’t see them all here preloaded, but at least it can read our labels with the scan feature. Let’s do this!!

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Margaretannem8s

4 years ago

Response from developer

Hello Margaretannem8s, thank you for your review. We really appreciate it!

Quick and easy

I tested this against a product I knew to be plastic free and one I suspected wasn’t. Green light for the organic product, red light for the one I believed probably contained plastic. Very useful! Would like a way to send ingredients lists from online shops to the app so I can check before I buy.

caro b767

5 years ago

Response from developer

Hello, Thank you for your review! You can use the app to scan ingredients online as well, as long as there is a clear picture of the ingredients. That way you can check your products before buying them online. Thanks again & have a lovely day!

Not off to a great start

I used to love this app, and still want to. Happy to add details and have the app use my camera, but I never have access to photo library and found it switched on. Turned it off and restarted, but the app STILL has access to my photo library. Please explain.

Also, I want to add details by products without barcodes but don’t seem to be able to.

EDIT: Had to change from 3-stars to 1-star as I’ve found products with microplastics in but the app says there aren’t due to not capturing a sufficiently focused photograph. It’s not good enough to just have a disclaimer no one will read

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Gwigwagwoo

5 years ago

Response from developer

Hello, Thank you for your review. An iOS app doesn’t need permission from the user to show the Apple provided photo picker that we use in the BTMB app (‘Library’ text you see when the app doesn’t have permission). The app does however need permission to access the photo library to be able to show the small ‘photo preview’ image in the bottom left corner of the app. That’s why you will only see this preview when the app has the right permission. A barcode is a unique identifier of each cosmetic product. Hence, it is absolutely necessary for us to receive the barcode so we know exactly which product you are scanning. We use optical character recognition technology to detect microplastics. Indeed, it is necessary that the picture is clear and the ingredients are readable for optimal results. This is how the technology operates. We apologize for the inconvenience. We hope we have addressed your concerns. Thank you again and have a lovely day.

Terrible app

Does it recognise any products😂?

Pollieboye

7 years ago

Useless

Totally useless. Scanner does not recognise any products.

Big Tram

7 years ago

GREAT APP!

I created a website called the AAEPS 5 years ago. I learned about micro beads and the harm they cause to they environment. I got this app right away and now I use it on a regular basis.
BEAT THE BEAD!

SebastianDragon