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How to Throw a Zero Waste Baby Shower (People Enjoy)

Wooden toy cake, a durable baby gift

Baby showers default to maximum disposability: balloon arches, plastic games, favor bags of trinkets, and a registry stuffed with gear the baby outgrows in weeks. A zero waste shower is not a lesser party; it redirects the same budget toward things the family will use for years. A planning guide, from registry to last guest … Read more

Is Recycled Polyester Eco-Friendly? Half Yes, Half No

Crushed PET plastic bottles for recycling

Recycled polyester is the workhorse claim of sustainable fashion: the swing tag says the jacket used to be water bottles, and the implication is that buying it helps. The truth is split down the middle. Compared to virgin polyester, recycled wins clearly. Compared to what the marketing implies, it falls short in two specific ways … Read more

The Buy-It-Once Home: Zero Waste Gear That Lasts Decades

Cast iron skillet cooking over a fire

On r/BuyItForLife, people post crockpots from 1997 and alarm clocks turning fifty, and the lesson under every photo is the same: the most sustainable product is the one you never replace. Durability is zero waste wearing work clothes. These are the buy-once items we recommend across the site, gathered in one place, with the math … Read more

Are Ziploc Bags Safe? The Microplastics Lawsuits, Explained

Produce stored in a single-use plastic bag

Ziploc bags sat quietly in the safe pile for decades. Then in April 2025 a class action landed on S.C. Johnson alleging the “microwave safe” and freezer labels mislead customers, because polyethylene bags shed microplastics under exactly those conditions. Rubbermaid’s parent company caught a similar suit. So are the bags in your drawer a problem? … Read more

Microplastics in Bottled Water: What the Research Shows

Rows of single-use bottled water

Bottled water sells on purity, which is what makes the research so uncomfortable. When Columbia University researchers counted the plastic in bottled water with new laser imaging in 2024, they found an average of around 240,000 plastic fragments per liter, most of them nanoplastics small enough to pass into tissue. Earlier work had already found … Read more