Verdict: Water Bottle Buddies are...

If your dog craves crunching water bottles, these toys are for you. Water Bottle Buddies like those sold by Kyjen provide an adorable sleeve for your water bottle, protecting your dog from bottle shards. When the bottle's shot, toss it in the recycling bin.

The Good: I love anything that reuses the things we discard. Plus, you're eliminating stuffing from hitting the trash bin. Cuteness, economically priced under $10.

The Bad: These aren't as durable as they should be. Westminster Pet Products makes the sleeves you see below, which are extremely durable but could stand an infusion of cuteness.
The Verdict: Can someone please marry the two? Nylon sleeves should be able to achieve both cuteness and durability. Then this product would be truly excellent.

Verdict: Adcraft Nonstick Pans are...

Adcraft is one of those brands you won't find on the shelf at Williams Sonoma or Crate & Barrel. In business since 1952, Adcraft (short for Admiral Craft Equipment) is one of the leading equipment suppliers to the restaurant industry. They know how to make pans.

I've tortured one of their tiny non-stick omelet pans for over a year, and the water still beads up on the "Excalibur" coating. Plus, it cost me less than $50. Plus, the big cushy silicone handle never heats up. If you cook eggs, ever, you need this pan. You can find them at your local restaurant supply store - just google it.

The Adcraft nonstick omelet pan gets a GOOD verdict - in fact, I should make a new AWESOME category for this one.

Verdict: Ziploc Evolve Baggies are...

Lately we're barraged by commercials preaching about "green" products. Companies like Clorox and Proctor & Gamble are really stepping up their efforts to offer green products. Unfortunately, it's all just a marketing angle. The sick thing is, they're pioneering new and better materials and techniques, yet only applying them to NEW offerings at higher price points!

Ziploc Evolve Sandwich and Storage Bags are made with 25% less plastic, manufactured using 50% renewable wind energy, and sold in 100%recycled boxes. That's great. And Ziploc didn't make these changes to all of their products because.....why? They can charge you more for a new product because "green" is one of your "core consumer needs." Sigh. The Verdict on Evolve Baggies:
To get an Excellent rating, Ziploc needs to step up to the plate and offer the kind of products that only they can produce at a reasonable cost. They need to solve these problems:

• make disposable baggies easy to recycle - get away from #4 plastics! It'll be a long time before everyone migrates away from disposables, so why not apply everything you're doing in the Evolve line to ALL your products?
• make baggies easy to reuse - as with semi-disposable plastic containers, consumers will pay more for something with a longer life span. why not invent the washable, reusable, semi-disposable baggie? This could easily expand into a product line addressing storage, cleaning, labeling...
• explore new materials - why can't our baggies biodegrade? Can we keep the lifecycle of each baggie contained to the household and eliminate the need for recycling altogether? This still supports a consumable product platform, cause people will always buy more, but wouldn't it be lovely if they turned into flushable waste when nuked?
  

At least there are companies out there doing it the right way all the time like Method, and now 100% reusable, recyclable Innate SS food containers (the lid pops into a bowl for nuking):

The Verdict: IKEA's Solig lantern is...

For only $2.99, this LED lamp from IKEA offers just enough soft light to wipe poop in the dark. That's awesome. Plus, it's $2.99. It takes 2 AAA batteries which install easily through a hatch in the bottom. The switch is a standard component, with no extra window dressing - just a tiny black nub on the underside...which isn't so easy to find by feel in the dark.

The lamp is a quick, cheap fix for mobile low-lighting. However, we've found the battery life to be much less than the advertised 60 hours. Any product that seems to eat batteries gets knocked down a bit in the rating - granted, a more energy efficient LED bulb would've resulted in a more expensive product.

Oh, yeah, and I guess you can use them as they're originally intended, for outdoor lantern lighting. The Verdict:
To get an Excellent Verdict, IKEA's Solig needs longer battery life and more intuitive interface balanced with the low cost.