Case study · Design

No Plastic Today — the evidence on plastic, and what to do about it

Client
My own project
Year
2026
Service
Web design
No Plastic Today home page: the NPT logo, headline and “Start cutting plastic” button beside a photo of a plastic bottle on a beach at sunset

Case study · Web design · My own project · 2026

Everyone agrees plastic is a problem. What most people can’t find is a straight answer to the next two questions: how bad is it really, and what should I do instead? The information exists, but it is spread across journals, government reports, campaign sites and industry brochures, and much of what gets repeated online can’t be traced to a source. No Plastic Today puts the evidence and the alternatives in one free place, for anyone, from a family to a packaging manager.

The brief · 01

The site had to serve people who want very different things from the same subject: families and students looking for simple changes, teachers looking for lessons, scientists checking a figure, and businesses asking what a switch would cost them. It also had to do something most sites on this topic don’t: shock people into acting while staying credible enough that nobody can dismiss it as scaremongering.

Before any design work I reviewed 30 existing sites on the subject and gathered the sources the new one would stand on: nearly 200 sources on harm, alternatives and economics, and 40 news feeds checked one by one. The question I kept asking was what would make a sceptical reader trust this site over the others?

Decisions that mattered · 02

  • Every claim links to its study. Each finding carries a link to the original paper, its year and authors, a plain rating of how strong the evidence is — high, medium, low or contested — and the date it was last checked. Popular figures that don’t hold up, like “more plastic than fish by 2050”, were left out rather than repeated.
  • Shocking, but honest about it. The statistics are meant to stop people scrolling, so every number shows its source, data year and confidence. The live counters say in plain words that they are illustrations of scale, not measurements.
  • Built for businesses as well as households. A material swap finder lets product teams filter alternatives by what they need to replace, how mature the material is and what happens at end of life — with a “watch out” note on every card. A cost calculator shows what staying with plastic packaging will cost in packaging taxes and fees, using the rates published by each government.
  • Hope alongside the harm. News arrives weekly from a set of checked sources, and nothing is published until an editor has read it. Good news gets its own “Wins this week” band, because people act when they believe action works.
  • Every abbreviation spelled out. The subject is full of acronyms that shut readers out. A full pass over every page spelled out each one at first use, so a student and a scientist can read the same page.
  • Independent and private. The site is free and takes no industry money; donations keep it running. There is no analytics tracking at all, and embedded videos load nothing until you press play. Donate is easy to find without being the first thing you see, so the site never looks like a fundraising page.

Outcome

Live at noplastictoday.com since 23 September 2026, one day after the build began, with donations, a weekly newsletter and weekly news all running. It launched with an evidence library, statistics, alternatives, a business case, school and family resources, a directory of organisations to support and a policy tracker, and it is now verified with Google and Bing so people searching for answers can find it.

77

studies and reports, each linked

44

statistics with their sources

24

alternative materials rated

0

analytics trackers

Screens · 03

Evidence library search for “microplastics”, filtered to studies and reports: 12 results, each with its key finding, an evidence-strength badge, the year and the authors
Evidence library: every result rated for strength
Material swap finder: filters for product type, material family, maturity and end of life above cards for aluminium, bagasse and bamboo, each with what it replaces, cost and a “watch out” note
Swap finder: alternatives with their costs and catches
Statistics page cards: US$7bn reuse opportunity, 18% cheaper returnable drink bottles, US$288bn–1.1tn yearly social cost of plastic to the US and more than US$13bn litigation risk, each with an evidence rating, source and verified date
Statistics: each number with its source and the date it was checked
Plastic cost calculator result for 100 tonnes a year in the United Kingdom: £65,182 a year exposure, broken down into Plastic Packaging Tax and packaging extended producer responsibility fees, each with its source and verified date
Business case: what staying with plastic packaging costs, charge by charge
No Plastic Today home page on a phone: the logo, headline and “Start cutting plastic” button, the beach photo and the “Every figure on this site links to the study behind it” card stacked in one column
On a phone everything stacks, with the fact-check promise straight after the headline

Built for a phone in a classroom

A lot of this site gets opened on a phone: by a student in class, a parent after a news story, someone standing in a supermarket aisle. The menu folds away below laptop width, every control is a comfortable size for a thumb, and the cards reflow into a single column without sideways scrolling.

The photos were converted to a modern image format that nearly halved their weight, so pages load quickly on a school connection or mobile data.

Visit noplastictoday.com
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