Plastic Packaging is Hurting Your Brand
Consumers are becoming more environmentally conscious. They are looking to businesses to address the problem.
Consumer behavior has come a long way since 1955, when Life magazine celebrated the new age of “Throwaway Living” made possible by single-use plastics. At that time, the link between the convenience of single-use items and prosperity was seeping into America’s subconscious.
Today, consumers have a very different opinion of single-use plastics fueled in large part by viral images and videos of discarded straws lodged into the nostrils of turtles or decayed seabirds with stomachs full of plastic mistaken for food. Far from believing that recycling is the ultimate solution, consumers are holding businesses responsible for the plastic they are producing and using their purchasing power to make it known. If businesses want to maintain consumer loyalty, a greater emphasis needs to be placed upon changing their packaging practices.
The statistics make it abundantly clear: the longer businesses hold on to single-use plastic packaging, the stronger their risk of alienating their consumer bases. According to UK-based sustainable consultancy Futerra, 88% of U.S. and U.K. consumers want brands to help them be more environmentally friendly. Additionally, a poll from IBM found that two-thirds of consumers in the U.S and Canada think it is important that a brand is sustainable or eco-friendly. The IBM poll also found that most shoppers are willing to pay a premium for recycled products. Another survey from Accenture found that 72% of respondents were buying more environmentally friendly products in 2019 than they did five years previously, while 81% said they expected to buy even more over the next five years.
“The shift in consumer buying, with more consumers willing to pay extra for environmentally friendly products, reinforces the need for companies to increase their commitments to responsible business practices,” said Jessica Long, a managing director at Accenture. “Companies across industries have started to lead with purpose, including embracing the circular economy as a greater opportunity to drive growth and competitive agility.”
Yet businesses have continued to latch onto their use of plastic packaging, and in fact doubled down on their reliance on plastic in recent years through increased lobbying against plastic bans and campaign donations. Plastic remains cheap to produce, and falling oil prices, which determine the price of creating new plastic, make plastic packaging appear to be the optimal solution for businesses. But this is shortsighted; according to a June 2021 report by Market Research Future, the global sustainable packaging market is projected to reach USD 470.3 billion by 2027 from an estimated USD 305.31 billion in 2020, suggesting that transitioning to more sustainable packaging solutions now will lead to market competition and economic gain.
With increasing demand for sustainable solutions, businesses will only hurt themselves and their bottom lines by continuing to use single-use plastics. Instead, businesses should be transitioning to more sustainable packaging solutions, becoming innovators in a space that is under pressure from consumers and market forces alike.
