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MicroPlastics vs Olive

Also the answer if you searched for a olive app alternative for microplastics.

We make one of these apps. Read the table accordingly: we lead 8 rows and 2 are comparable, and we chose which rows to compare. Every claim about Olive comes from their own public materials, linked at the bottom, last checked August 9, 2026 — if one is wrong, tell us and we will correct it.

The short answer

Olive scores what is in the food. It does not score what the food is in. On the axis this app exists for — the container, the polymer, and the conditions it is used under — there is nothing in Olive’s model to compare against. A yogurt in a glass jar and the same yogurt in a plastic pot are the same product to Olive. They are not the same product here.

What Olive is

Olive is a broad clean-living scanner. It checks food, cosmetics and bottled water against a database its App Store listing describes as more than 10 million items, returns a 0–100 score, and flags additives, seed oils, processed sugars, pesticides, and contaminants including PFAS, heavy metals and microplastics. It also runs a seed-oil-free restaurant finder and publishes results from its own heavy-metal lab testing.

Side by side

MicroPlastics compared with Olive across 10 dimensions
 OliveMicroPlastics
Barcode lookupOver 10 million items, per their App Store listingBarcode scanning against Open Food Facts and Open Beauty Facts — millions of food and cosmetic products, plus visual AI identification for anything with no barcode
Unpackaged and unlisted itemsBarcode-led, so an item with no barcode has no entryVisual identification handles cookware, drinkware, cutting boards and loose produce — none of which carry a barcode
Microplastics in the scoreA contaminant flag within a broader food scoreThe entire score. Five weighted components, nothing else in the model
Packaging format scoredNot described in their public materials15 packaging formats as their own database, 30 of our 100 points, and the app reads Open Food Facts' per-component packaging data including its food-contact flag
Use conditions — heat, abrasion, reuseNot described in their public materials25 of the 100 points. Microwaving the same tub changes the number
Per-claim evidence gradeNot described in their public materialsEvery product carries A–D, and the grade caps the confidence the page may claim
Confidence stated separately from riskNot described in their public materialsTwo numbers on every page, deliberately given equal visual weight
Cosmetics ingredient analysisYes — per-ingredient green/yellow/red with plain-language reasonsYes — Open Beauty Facts barcode lookup in the app, plus a free INCI checker, 120+ ingredient pages and a cosmetics brand database on the web
Exposure tracking over timeScan history and trendsDaily plastic count, streaks and a long-run exposure profile
IndependenceStates no ads, no affiliates, no paid scoresNo paid scores or placements; affiliate links disclosed where they exist

"Not described in their public materials" means exactly that — we can only report what a company publishes, and absence of a published claim is not proof a feature is missing.

Which one you want

Use Olive if

Your question is nutritional rather than material — what is in the food, not what it came in.

Use MicroPlastics if

Plastics are specifically what you are trying to reduce. You want to know whether it matters that the yogurt is in a tub rather than a jar, whether reheating in that container changes anything, and how much of the answer is measured versus inferred. That is a different question from "is this food good", and it needs a model with the container in it.

These are not mutually exclusive and we are not going to pretend they are. Plenty of people run a broad scanner for the weekly shop and a specialist for the things they use every day.

Check our working before you install anything

The whole database is on the web, free, with no account: 132 products scored component by component, 30 materials, 15 packaging formats, and 24 sources each listed with what it does not establish. That is a harder thing to fake than a feature list.

Search the free databaseGet the app free

Frequently Asked Questions

MicroPlastics or Olive — which should I use?

Olive scores what is in the food. It does not score what the food is in. On the axis this app exists for — the container, the polymer, and the conditions it is used under — there is nothing in Olive’s model to compare against. A yogurt in a glass jar and the same yogurt in a plastic pot are the same product to Olive. They are not the same product here.

Is MicroPlastics a good Olive alternative?

Plastics are specifically what you are trying to reduce. You want to know whether it matters that the yogurt is in a tub rather than a jar, whether reheating in that container changes anything, and how much of the answer is measured versus inferred. That is a different question from "is this food good", and it needs a model with the container in it. The table above compares the two on the axis this app exists for; where Olive works on a different question entirely, that is a reason to use both rather than a reason to switch.

How do we know this comparison is accurate?

Every claim about Olive is drawn from their own public materials, linked at the bottom of this page and last checked on August 9, 2026. Where we could not verify something we say "not described in their public materials" rather than asserting a feature is absent. Products change; if a row here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it, including when the correction favours them.

Where these claims come from

Checked August 9, 2026. Spotted something wrong? Tell us — corrections are published, not quietly applied.

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