The short version

Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Some of the products we review were sent to us free of charge by the brand. Neither of those things buys a positive verdict, and neither changes what we write.

How we make money

Affiliate commissions. We participate in affiliate programmes, including the Amazon Associates programme and retailer and brand programmes run through networks such as impact.com. When we link to a product we may earn a percentage of the sale.
The MicroPlastics app. Our own product, which has a free tier and a paid subscription.

We do not sell sponsored posts, paid placements, paid rankings, or “best of” list positions. A brand cannot buy its way into a recommendation on this site, and we do not accept payment in exchange for a review.

Free products

We sometimes accept free samples so we can test things properly. When we do, we say so clearly at the top of the article, before the review, not in a footnote.

Our conditions for accepting a sample are fixed and non-negotiable:

No copy approval. The brand does not see the review before it is published.
No editorial input. The brand does not get to suggest changes, add claims, or request removals.
No guaranteed verdict. We tell brands in advance that the review may be negative.
No payment for coverage. A free sample is the product itself, and nothing else changes hands.
We keep the right to say a product is not worth buying, and to recommend a cheaper competitor or no purchase at all.

How we review

Claims get sourced. Where we state what a product is made of, that comes from the manufacturer's own published specification or from independent testing, and we say which and when we checked it.
We say when we don't know. If a brand does not disclose something, we write that it does not disclose it rather than guessing or repeating an unverified third-party database.
We cite the counter-evidence. If the research cuts against a product we recommend, or against a scary number we quote, it goes in the article.
A commercial relationship never changes a verdict. If our published position on a category was that a product type is a consumable, or a poor buy, that position stays the same after we join a brand's affiliate programme.

Health claims

Nothing on this site is medical advice. We write about exposure reduction, not treatment, and we try hard to distinguish between what the evidence shows, what it suggests, and what is simply unknown.

Questions

If you think we have got something wrong, or that a disclosure is missing or unclear, tell us and we will correct it. See our privacy policy for how we handle data.