A plain-language walkthrough of what actually gets tested, and by what.
The MPFREE Standard is built around two pillars, tested by up to three analytical methods, and governed by a numeric threshold-setting process that's deliberately separate from the certification body itself.
Pillar 1 (Inside the Product) covers liquids, food contents, and active crop tissue — anything a consumer might ingest or that becomes part of the food supply. Pillar 2 (Downstream Waste) covers packaging, farm mulches, and processing effluent — the material that leaves the product and enters the environment after use.
Each analytical method used across both pillars measures something genuinely different: µFTIR and Raman microspectroscopy both count and identify particles, at different size floors; Py-GC-MS measures total polymer mass, including the sub-micron fraction neither optical method can resolve. A results page always shows which specific method or methods produced a given result, tied to the size classification framework used across the industry [1] — never a single collapsed pass/fail line — because a single number can't represent three structurally different measurements.
One thing you won't find anywhere in a certification result: an invented detection-limit number with no derivation behind it. Numeric thresholds are set by an independent Scientific Advisory Board, not by MPFREE's own marketing or engineering team — see the companion article on how that governance process works.