My Little Plastic Footprint
How does it work?
It’s very simple: choose one or more of these six areas of your life – bathroom, kitchen, travel, leisure, household, and garden – and start your plastic diet today. To calculate your plastic footprint, we have created the Plastic Mass Index (PMI). The PMI is a measure to calculate your contribution to plastic pollution. The closer your PMI is to zero, the less you contribute; the closer your PMI gets to 100, the more you contribute. By going on a plastic diet, you will reduce your PMI.
Why is it important?
We all consume too much plastic. Literally. There is plastic in the food we eat, the water we drink and even in the air we breathe. Unfortunately, what most people don’t realize is that plastic can make us sick when it enters our body. The chemicals in plastic and plastic particles may cause cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s, arthritis, impotency and even harm babies in the womb.
As humans, we create a lot of plastic waste. More than 80% of the plastic pollution in the oceans comes from land. And of all the plastic we use every day, we throw 50% away within 20 minutes. Plastic in the environment does not biodegrade, it fragmentizes into smaller pieces, called microplastics. Today, our oceans resemble a global soup of microplastics: the plastic soup. We are all responsible for this; consumers, companies, and governments.
To reduce our plastic footprint, we all need to go on a plastic diet. With the updated My Little Plastic Footprint app, we will help you reduce the amount of plastic you use, advise you to choose the right alternatives, and thereby prevent you from getting sick from the many toxic chemicals added to plastics. The diet revolves around tackling the concerns about plastic affecting human health, avoiding leakage of plastic into the environment and aiming for an absolute reduction of plastic production.
Who is behind this app?
The international team behind this app includes the following partners:
Plastic Soup Foundation: NGO based in Amsterdam leading the worldwide campaign “Beat the Microbead”. Their mission: no plastic waste in our water & our bodies!
EA: in-depth knowledge of data and gamification expert.
Smäll: one of the leading advertising agencies in Spain in the field of sustainability.
Ocean Recovery Alliance: International NGO based in Hong Kong and the US, with two global programs on plastic pollution, one of which is the Plastic Disclosure Project.
Category : Education
Reviews (26)
great app and educational, my one suggestion, when mentioning to not use pads or tampons, provide a zero waste solution in your answer. I know this information, cloth pads, cups, etc. but for someone new to the scene, this could turn them off really fast. this is a serious problem too, for health and environment reasons. I hope you consider the addition! and I will continue to use the app, so far I love it.
The app is a user experience mess - it does not recognize the back button of an Android smartphone, it expects swipes as a way to move between cards which sometimes are not registered, and (perhaps unintentionally) makes usage of it slower. For a checklist with rich descriptions, it makes the process of checking items unnecessarily tedious, requiring a tap, a swipe, and a tap. To add to it, opening a category reverts items from completed to ongoing for this category.
Definitely educational, but the PMI (plastic mass index) is definitely an interesting yet incomplete idea from a user point of view. It's the central focus of the app to help you become more motivated to reduce plastic yet the PMI is calculated based on incorrect assumptions then it is annoying. I quit the app because it wouldn't let me add more items to my plastic free efforts & then it has an ongoing category that just doesn't get calculated into the PMI. Many issues tbh.
I love this app, it gives you tips and alternatives to help reduce you plastic footprint, it's also helpful to see what I could still work on. The quiz section is very interesting and is great for learning different facts and statistics about plastic pollution. This is such a helpful app.
Its an ok app, but loses its appeal quite quickly. It provides the basics...but it would be good to actually provide carbon facts to back up some of the switches. Some of the switches sound like greenwashing - how are the products more sustainable?? Just because a product is plastic, doesn't necessarily mean its bad and likewise just because a product is bamboo mean its good...it needs more detail than that.
Good idea, but needs a few adjustments. First off having to add the catagories to your diet first vefore you can complete them is a bit annoying when you already do stuff but you have to fill it in. I would make a complete button next to the 'add to my diet' button. But mostly, I get that this app is about plastic and not sustainability as a whole but why do they still promote buying meat in the 'plastic packaging on meat' section? Meat is super unsustainable, I wish it would focus more on that
It's making me lose my temper! I've got to the 'what plastic have you stopped using' page, tapped 3 things, the page just sat there! I couldn't move it up or down.Didn't know what to do next, so uninstalled it, put it back, (and this is costing me my internet allowance for the day.) This phone is new, 6" screen, it all works. I tapped the 3 items again, and swiped the screen like mad until finally a blue 'continue' button came up. Tried tapping it, it's shot down, won't stay up, can't continue!
The PMI is nice. But the rest seems to be just 5 lines of text with a tip. The zero plastic list is mentioned, but no direct link to the list. So for all the real finding of alternatives you have to go to Google again, not in the app
Good idea but poor execution. The most disappointing part for me was the superiority of the advices. They didn't give me much new insights beyond the basics I already knew. Also, the app itself is a mess, buttons and options often don't work or are inconsistent.
- Bad user experience (really, back-button is not allowed to quit the application?) - You have to create an account, but you get no confirmation, nor does it tell you how to access/modify/delete the application. - Graphics and overall style are immature and not user friendly.
I really love everything about this app because I'm hoping to become more educated on the plastic problem. However, I would really love it if the measurements were given in lbs as well because I'm so used to that compared to the metric system that I don't feel as big of a shock with the numbers.
I'm single use plastic free already but this has helped me ditch plastics that are not single use. Thank you!
I just installed this and was not given a language option, it downloaded in Dutch. I tried to change it in setting but there is no option to change language, I can still make it work, as I speak some German, but very annoying, hoping for an update.
The footprint not show ing on android 11, please fix it.
Really good app to decrease your plastic your plastic usage. Its quite gamified too! The only thing I would recommend to the devs, would be to have a check box you can press, when you 'complete' a pledge. Awesome little app!
You all did great job with this app I would love to have sth similar Like app that could show me who I shouldn't support with my money as a costumer which brands are producing most polutions or don't care about recycling... That would be great Let's translate this app to other language People like me could help in spreading influence of this app. In my country is poor culture of caring about recycling or air quality. I would love it to change it. I am open for free cooperation.
This app could be a lot easier use. It certainly is not intuitive. Also there are products in there that a do not use already that I can't add to the already complete list.
The idea of the app is good but the inf contained in it is inaccurate. I played with the app a bit until I came across one place where they list rayon fabric among synthetics. Actually rayon is made from cellulose. How can I trust what they write about other things?
I do like the app as it makes you more aware, however, my concern is that its encouraging you to dispose of plastic items you already have to replace with plastic free ones before you would of otherwise done that. Where does all the extra waste go?
Yeah there's improvable aspects, but just wanted to mention about the fascinating, overwhelming facts revealed from the quizzes. Reminds me of Earth 911 quizzes too.
It is very useful! This app allows you to make goals in your day-to-day life that are easy, achievable and allow you to cut down onyour plastic intake.
A good helper for figuring out what to focus on in the home to reduce plastics. My question is, is it really good to recommend liquid detergent over powder even though liquid detergent is in plastic jugs? Maybe some links to stats and figures would be helpful
Love this app for its clever use of info and solutions to most plastic problems, I have already started my journey to a zero waste life and I like that this app gives me ideas for things I can adapt into my life. Well done :)
A real eye-opener. I didn't even think that there could be microplastics in my cosmetics. Love the app and the educational value of it.
Great initiative. Buttons like 'Mark as Done' , 'i dont use it' etx are xomimf.over the text. Pls look into it. May be can be places aftwr the text ratjer than flaoting.
I don't use any kind of plastic or containers unless in new products that are unavoidable like a TV or new computer , if not bought second hand, for more than a year. Selecting that I quit all the options that they give me gave a PMI of 84, below my country average that is 90. I realized that you can add more items after that but it is very slow, I have to click 3 times to add one item as completed. I think the app is a good idea and was very motivated but need to improve a lot.