Scoring rubric

What the score means

Every product is broken into named parts (body, lid, handle, gasket…). Each part is in exactly one of four states:

• non-plastic captured evidence confirms a non-plastic material.
• plastic captured evidence confirms plastic.
• silicone captured evidence confirms silicone or another elastomer. Counted at half penalty: neither plastic nor fully plastic-free.
• unknown no evidence either way. Unknown is a first-class value, not a gap.

Score = percent of parts confirmed non-plastic (0–100), with silicone parts earning half credit. Confidence = percent of parts that are not unknown, capped at 80% when every evidence row comes from a listing or brand page (no independent verification such as a review, teardown, or user photo). The score is never displayed without its confidence.

What gets listed

A product is excluded from category listings, sorts, filters, rankings, and comparisons when at least one part is confirmed plastic and no part is confirmed non-plastic. Both halves are required: we exclude only when the evidence actively shows plastic and never shows a non-plastic part. Parts with no evidence are not counted either way, so an all-unknown product is simply unscored, not excluded.

Excluded products keep their page, their evidence, and their score, so you can still look up what a product is made of and check our sources. Their pages say plainly why they are excluded and link to higher-scoring products in the same category. Silicone sits between the two: it never triggers exclusion on its own, so an all-silicone product stays listed, but it also does not rescue a product that has confirmed plastic parts. It still scores at half penalty.

The rule is computed from evidence, not editorial judgement. If a seller confirms a non-plastic part later, the product returns to the listings automatically.

The quality bar

Most records here are extracted automatically. A record only publishes itself, without a person reading it first, when it clears every one of these:

• Confidence of at least 70%: most parts have confirmed materials.
• At most one part with an unknown material.
• Between two and eight parts, each a discrete physical component.
• A source we have previously verified returns usable, accurate pages.

Anything short of that waits for a person.

We do not currently require a quality signal. A quality signal is evidence that someone other than us has engaged with a product: an independent review, or a rating count on the retailer's page. We show it when we have it, and many records here do not have one. It has never affected the score: the score comes only from material evidence, and every rule above still applies to every record on this site.

Rules we never break

• We score only from captured evidence. We never infer or guess a material from photos, price, or brand reputation.
• Unknown parts count against a product: they can never raise a score, and each product page says why.
• “BPA free” is treated as a strong flag that plastic is present, since not as a plastic-free signal.
• Every score traces to at least one evidence row: an exact quote and a link to its source. Evidence is append-only.
• We state observed evidence, not verdicts. “Listing says PP lid”, never “this product is toxic.”
• We make no health claims about microplastics. For the research, see sources such as PubMed Central.

Where the data comes from

Retailer-first: the listing is the unit of record. Evidence can come from listings, reviews, brand pages, teardowns, user photos, or manual verification. Each evidence row records its source type and URL. Manufacturer data comes at a later stage.