Blog • November 27, 2025
Inauguration
On this page
This is the biggest update I’ve had to offer since starting the project. I’m happy to inaugurate a new website (and a new name), which will hopefully serve as an excellent coordination point for ending the problem of plastic pollution!
For those 3-4 readers coming from Substack (thanks guys!), you may have noticed the lack of publications in the last year. Part of that was spending the first half of the year simply not working on this project, but the bigger part of it was the time it took to create this site.
On Substack I quickly ran into the formatting guardrails. For my construction materials review, I found that I was needing to tediously include caveats over and over, like every time that wood was mentioned in the context of construction, I’d have to mention that even though it’s mostly made of wood, engineered wood products like plywood, OSB, etc. that are used heavily in construction are also made with plastic adhesives, paints are made of plastic, silicone caulk is plastic, etc. etc. The repetitiveness of these caveats got me thinking of a way to efficiently convey the important info (“is [thing in the built environment] plastic or not”) without repeating myself a billion times. I decided on a wiki format, as this way I can have one location where I address the plastic-content characteristics of a given material/material class, and then anywhere else it’s mentioned I can simply automatically link to it.
Well, that project ended up spiraling pretty far. I’m a software engineer, but web development is completely new to me, so learning the correct approach to make the tool I wanted proved to be quite complex. Beyond just that, the summer here in Boulder is always an intense pull away from the computer, so progress from April-August was basically zero. Eventually, though, I got there, so now I’m happy to introduce the result: zpac.net!
New formatting style for informational articles
So the part that everyone cares about will be the way I’ve decided on presenting plastic-or-not information efficiently. Basically, the site will automatically process every article I write to detect certain keywords. In an internal file, I’ve pre-classified these keywords (mostly materials) by color. In the top-right of this page (if you’re reading this on zpac.net) you should be able to see the legend showing what each color signifies. This allows me to efficiently present the material composition of different household objects, products, construction materials, etc. so that readers can see whether it’s plastic or not at a glance. For those objects of interest which aren’t themselves materials, such as roofing or bedding, I’ve decided to write wiki-style articles to go into the details of the different material options, what to look for, what to avoid, and anything else that’s potentially of interest from a zero-plastic perspective. These wiki articles should also autolink into the body text of every article I write, so that readers can jump around efficiently and get the info they need without wasting a bunch of time or reading a million words.
The site as it exists right now is capable of these two behaviors, but it’s still a work in progress. Frankly, there’s an immense amount of work still to do, particularly from a content perspective. The wiki has barely got 10 articles on it, most of which were adapted from my construction materials review I was doing on the Substack blog last year. Eventually, I want the wiki to serve as a definitive knowledge base for everything that people regularly interact with, from construction materials & the built environment to clothes, food, transportation, sports equipment, and everything else. I have a roadmap I’m working off which I’ll be burning down methodically. I’m torn about migrating the Substack blog archive to the new site; for one thing, each one of those Substack posts is an absolute beast, and I don’t yet have a convenient programmatic way to migrate them from Substack to the new site (essentially to export the articles as Markdown), so each one entails a few hours of work in general–work I’d rather be doing to write new content in light of the new formatting possibilities. That said, the Substack articles can be roughly divided between “meta” articles (regular blogposts about this project, my progress, news & updates like this one) and “wiki” or “buying guide” articles (the really long ones that present a bunch of purchasing options I found), and I intend to port all the “meta” ones here just to have a consistent record. I already ported 2 of them (the ones from early 2024, almost 2 years ago!) and only have a few others worth migrating. The other content will be adapted to fit the wiki or products format, which is a perfect segue to talk about that:
Products section vision
You may have noticed that in the top nav bar of zpac.net there’s a Products section. When clicked, this simply says “coming soon”; this is because I wanted to “get the site out there” without letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I have a fulltime job (unrelated to ZPAC) and never feel like I have enough time to write all the content that I need to, but rest assured: as I work through the Substack archive, I’ll be making Products pages for each of the zero-plastic options I listed in the past. The goal for the Products section is to be a conveniently-categorized, maintained, and time-efficient index of all the zero-plastic goods available for purchase in each category. However, it’s not ready yet (actually even from a site programming perspective, I’m still not fully certain how I’m going to approach the categorization, visual presentation, and user interface of the Products pages). I’m quite happy with where things have gotten with the wiki, so I have faith that something useful and efficient can be developed for Product listings.
New name, same goal
You may also be wondering what the name means. It’s actually somewhat indeterminate at this point, though: the joke I’ve been sending to friends is that it means “Zero Plastic Action Center|Council|Club|Corporation|Committee|Collective|Corps”. The “C” remains to be decided, basically. But it’s not really important: what matters is that we are taking action towards zero-plastic options. So, for now: ZPAC. It also has a secret extra meaning but I’m not ready to share that one yet (and may not be ready for another year+, haha).
New content schedule
As for blogposts like this one, I’m maintaining a 2x or 3x a week content schedule. There is so much about this topic to cover, and so many interesting & exciting possibilities for development, research, organization, and activism that I’m sure I won’t be running out of content anytime soon. Under the hood, the content schedule is really going to be more like 1 per day, as I’ll be working through my backlog of wiki articles too behind the scenes (those ones won’t be published on Substack, though). I’m excited to grow the new site into the best possible resource for anyone looking to minimize exposure to plastic in their own lifestyle!
Conclusion
It’s my sincere hope that everyone who’s taking the problem of plastic pollution seriously will be able to use my site and work as a resource. If these ideas interest you, if you want to know how you can contribute, or if you just want to reach out and say hi, please don’t hesitate to do so! Just email me using the little feedback button at the bottom right of the screen. Frankly, at this stage of development, the best way to contribute is to just use the site, tell me if something is broken or you don’t like something, and reach out if you have a certain feature you want that’s missing.
As always, thanks for reading. Until next time, which will be much sooner than the last next time was!