A Credit Card's Worth.
And Then Some.

That's what our friend Simon texted us when we first asked him about microplastics.

Most people feel exactly what Simon feels. Not alarm. Not denial. Just a quiet sense that something isn't quite right about what ends up on their plate, in their glass, and under their kitchen sink. This feeling is our enemy.

Our founding team started by working on plastic. It seemed like the obvious place to start. The average person ingests roughly a credit card's worth of it every week.

Most substances break down. They decompose, get absorbed, return to something the natural world can process. Plastic doesn't do that. Plastic's decomposition process is breaking into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic, forever.

Those pieces are now everywhere. In the soil. In the water. In the animals we eat. And of course in the packaging and containers that carry food from production to your kitchen.

Plastic particles don't just pass through. They accumulate. Plastic particles have been detected in human blood, lungs, liver, kidneys, placenta, and brain tissue. They carry chemical additives into tissue and release them slowly, over years. What that slow release does to the body is something research is still catching up to. The direction the research is pointing to is not reassuring.

Our founding team started by working on plastic. But those questions led to more. Research into plastic led us to phthalates and PFAS. Then to pesticides and heavy metals. Each question wandered into the next.

Soon we were wrestling with questions larger than just industrial chemical contamination. Why do so many people report feeling lighter, less inflamed when they eat on travels in Europe? Why do the same products sold in Europe contain different ingredients than the ones sold here? Why does the FDA use the GRAS system? How did the agency designed to protect consumers end up so closely entangled with the industry it oversees?

Most people don't want much. They just want to go to the store, buy what they need, and trust that what's on the shelf is actually safe. To walk into a grocery store without anxiety.

That's just not the reality in America right now. And it doesn't matter which store. The problems around plastic and industrial chemical exposure are just as real in the organic aisle.

Here's the thing though.

This isn't hopeless. It isn't even that complicated once you have the right information. You don't need to overhaul your life or eat only what you grow yourself. You just need to know which brands to trust, which ones to avoid, and where the real risks actually are.

No individual can figure all of this out alone. That's what we're here for. That information isn't easy to find. Most of it doesn't exist yet. That's exactly why we built Unplastic Labs. Independent testing, funded by members, answerable to no one else.

P.S. There is a famous Latin expression that asks, who watches the watchmen? When it comes to our health, I find myself asking something else: what if the watchmen aren't watching at all?

Science once thrived in the hands of individuals: curious minds driven by wonder. Why can't people become patrons of science again? Not commissioning art or cathedrals, but commissioning safety.

Through the power of membership, we fund health science at a scale no individual could manage alone. Our goal is to build, through our own testing, the most complete independent record of modern contaminants in consumer products. Our Library of Alexandria, if you will.

Over time, we want Unplastic Labs to become the most trusted independent resource for what people eat, drink, and bring into their homes. Every member who joins makes the next answer possible. And the answers are already overdue.