Sustainable packaging an increasingly high priority for consumers: GlobalData

According to GlobalData, a data and analytics company, consumers are increasingly putting pressure on manufacturers to improve the impact that packaging has on the environment.

“This sudden interest in sustainability has been driven by more open discussion via social media, and increased government lobbying resulting in action against plastics. The result of this pressure is evidenced by changes to legislation, such as the UK introducing a minimum 5p charge for plastic carrier bags,” said Mayu Teeven, Consumer Analyst, GlobalData. “Using sustainable packaging to reflect cleaner and healthier living has become a priority for many consumers. As demand for organic and natural products grows, and the clean label trend continues to increase in popularity, having non-recyclable plastic packaging will start to limit the success of products which rate highly on ethics and sustainability in other parts of the supply chain.”

While sustainable packaging was once a niche with a minority of consumers noticing, GlobalData’s 2016 Q3 global consumer survey fount that 75 per cent of consumers worldwide now think that living an ethical or sustainable lifestyle is important to creating a feeling of wellbeing.

“Currently, the biggest challenge for producers is to convince consumers that sustainable packaging materials are worth the extra cost,” said Teeven. “Although there are long-term savings to be made by manufacturers moving to more sustainable materials, in the short term, prices will likely need to increase to cover the research and development costs of developing new materials and upgrading machinery to work with the new packs.”