A recent consumer study we did yielded some surprising and not-so-surprising results. On the not-so-surprising side, most people care about protecting the planet and want to buy from brands that offer sustainable and circular solutions, even at a higher price. At the same time, particularly young people don’t actually recycle as actively as their older counterparts. In fact, just 34% of 18-24-year-olds said they recycle more than 90% of the packaging they use. For 55-64-year-olds, that number was as much as 70%. If you find those numbers surprising, you’re not alone – we do too.
There are three decisive moments in a well-functioning circular packaging system and, in order to work, they all need to happen seamlessly. So what are these moments and where is there room to narrow the gap between consumers’ good intentions and the actions they actually take? Let’s have a look.
1. Brands need to know what they’re doing
Generally speaking, people want to be able to trust the brands they use. That means that they want brand owners to do due diligence about the right kind of packaging so that they can see that sustainability work has been done at the brand-owner level.
Whether at the supermarket, picking up a latte on the go, or ordering something online, people prefer to buy from brands that have already made the right choices for them. And considering that the food chain is the single biggest climate impactor, the work brands do here is incredibly important. If consumers don’t understand the choices out there, it’s very hard for them to make the right ones.
Brands need to not only do the hard work of sourcing and implementing the most sustainable options available, but they also need to make sure consumers know how to do their own part in the packaging’s journey. That brings us to step two.
2. Consumers want to know what they’re buying
If we think about what packaging is future-proof and will survive, it’s the ones that consumers actually decide to buy and use. That decision is made in the step above. But what happens when they’re done using it is up to the consumer – so all of us.
Here, too, brands have a big role to play by making the barrier to recycle as low as possible. Think things like clearly marked instructions that tell you where and how what you buy should be recycled. And that means going beyond just the packaging and making recycling super easy with things like on-site collection points and clearly marked bins.
I’ve personally followed the development in packaging for many years, and I believe that consumers know what to do and want to do the right thing, But everything needs to move forward hand-in-hand. And if you don’t have the collection and sorting where it’s convenient to actually use, people will be forced to make the wrong choices.
Right now there are plenty of sites in Europe and other places that can take all kinds of recycled material for further processing, but that material needs to be collected. Sure, it’s a lot of work and it can be a bit messy, but if we really want a circular economy, the streams need to grow considerably.
3. Consumers need to make the choice to recycle what they use
So the packaging is sustainably designed, clearly marked and convenient to recycle. And on top of all that, the person using it has the best intentions – to do the right thing and recycle it all correctly.
But remember what I told you up at the top? One of the most surprising findings in our new consumer study was that young people were much less likely to recycle than their older counterparts.
This is something we’ve been thinking a lot about. Young people are very aware of the challenges we all face and the importance of recycling, so why is that not turning into action? One reason might be that younger people tend to live in smaller homes with less room for separate bins for plastic, paper, cardboard etc. Or maybe it’s that they consume less and feel like that means that the impact of their choices matters less, too. One positive option could also be that they actually do actively recycle and it’s such a natural part of their daily lives that they don’t even report it. Either way, here too, making it super simple to recycle is key.
When it comes to making sure the journey to the eco-evolution is as smooth as can be, it’s crucial to make sure the decisive moments we’ve talked about here are as seamless as can be, too. We do want that sustainable packaging to end up on the circular journey we envision and the world needs.
