Category: Consumer behavior

Demand for sustainable pet products, manufacturing and services is soaring, but is the industry ready?

Read the full story at Pet Product News.

Sustainability, and environmental and social consciousness, are no longer simply buzzwords that industries and businesses can afford to ignore or simply slap on a label. Consumers are demanding that the manufacturers and retailers they buy from demonstrate measurable and significant gains toward becoming more sustainable in all that they do. Pet owners, a considerable subset of shoppers, are no different, and industry participants both on the manufacturing and retailing sides of the market are meeting that demand.

A recent report by NielsenIQ indicates sustainability is growing across the consumer packaged goods space, including the pet category.

Drew Barrymore’s sustainable home goods collab nods to the rise of refillables

Read the full story at Triple Pundit.

The effervescent Drew Barrymore has partnered with sustainable consumer brand Grove Collaborative on a line of 15 home goods products. The limited-edition collection features refillable packaging and two signature scents.

Consumers have signaled that they’re ready for refillable and sustainable products, and there’s a blossoming potential to bring them to scale. Celebrity endorsements and partnerships like this one can help influence a growing number of consumers to take the leap toward eliminating excessive packaging and single-use items from their day-to-day lives.

The Playbook: How retailers can use fewer single-use bags and encourage customers to bring their own reusable bags

Download the document.

A product of a first-of-its-kind collaboration among Closed Loop Partners and many of the world’s leading retailers, The Playbook highlights effective solutions to reduce the number of bags needed by retailers and encourage the use of reusable bags customers already have at home. Key insights from the playbook are based on research, interviews, surveys and learnings from 17 of the world’s leading retailers across four key categories: communications, employee training, bag and fixture design, and customer incentives.

Plastic bottoms out list of perceived sustainability among consumers

Read the full story at Pro Food World.

Global consumers have a PET peeve against plastic.

That’s according to PMMI Business Intelligence’s 2022 report “Future of Packaging and Sustainability.” Plastic was at the bottom of the list of packaging types considered sustainable or better for the environment across nearly all global regions.

Less than 10% of consumers in Latin America, North America, and Europe consider plastic to be sustainable or better for the environment, the report says, citing the 2022 survey of 32,365 consumers, “Euromonitor International Voice of the Consumer Lifestyles Survey.”

About 12% of Asia Pacific consumers and about 23% of Middle Eastern and African consumers consider it sustainable.

The only region where another material is ranked lower than plastic is the Middle East and Africa, where 22% of consumers believe metal packaging is sustainable.

Citizen Food Waste Attitudes and Behaviours Out of Home

Download the report.

WRAP is working with Hospitality and Food Service (HaFS) businesses to help the sector reduce wasted food. This includes targeted support for pubs, hotels, restaurants, Quick Service Restaurants, Healthcare, Education, Leisure, Services and Staff Catering. Through initiatives such as the Hospitality and Food Service Agreement, the Food Waste Reduction Roadmap, Guardians of Grub and the Courtauld Commitment 2030, WRAP is helping the sector to deliver a 50% reduction in food waste by 2030, in line with UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3.

WRAP research shows that the majority of food waste arisings in the UK is generated by households, but the waste coming from the HaFS sector is not negligible – 1.1Mt is the total food waste arisings from the sector; and on average, 18% of the food purchased is being thrown away. Food waste costs the HaFS sector £3.2 billion every year.

WRAP undertook research about citizen food waste out home for the first time in 2012. Since
then, WRAP conducted follow up research in March 20203 (unpublished) before building on the
findings in 2022. The main findings address the following research questions:

  • What is the frequency of eating out of home; and how has this changed as a result of the cost-of-living crisis
  • What are the estimated levels of food left uneaten out of home; when and what type of food is typically left uneaten and in which venues and occasions it occurs
  • What happens to food left uneaten
  • Why do customers leave food when eating out and what are their attitudes to uneaten food
  • What are citizens’ portion sizing behaviours and what are the barriers to enhance them further

The latest research updates the insights and assesses any changes that might have occurred
after the changes that have taken place in the HaFS sector with businesses and organisations
increasingly expected to undertake measures to ensure sustainability in their operations and
supply chain.

There’s an environmental rebound problem in the food-sharing economy

Read the full story from Anthropocene Magazine.

In a new study, researchers made a surprising discovery: the environment benefits of online food sharing are often undone by how consumers spend their saved cash.

Why reuse programs shouldn’t wait for consumers

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

Recent surveys and pilots can help us better understand the consumer appetite for reusable packaging — and provide insights into how reuse should move forward.

Upcycled food helps brands, consumers combat waste

Read the full story at Smart Brief.

When examining how to improve the food industry’s sustainability, many companies are focused on cutting down on single-use plastic and other packaging-related efforts. However, more and more brands are concentrating their attention on curbing food waste across the supply chain. As consumers have become more aware of these issues, they are increasingly looking for ways to support solutions, such as upcycled food products.

Inside Gen Z’s rising ESG standards

Read the full story at Food Business News.

Sustainability is higher on the list of priorities for younger consumers, according to data from Morning Consult. The Washington-based global intelligence company found Gen Z shoppers are nearly twice as likely as baby boomers to consider a food and beverage product’s environmental impact.

Climate impact labels could help promote sustainable food choices: study

Read the full story from The Hill.

Labels placed on fast food items highlighting their high climate impact may sway consumers to make more sustainable choices, new study results show. 

Food accounts for around one-third of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions, while animal-based foods like red meat and dairy products make up a large proportion of these emissions. 

Researchers carried out a randomized clinical trial with more than 5,000 participants to determine whether calling attention to red meat’s climate impact could change consumer menu selections. 

Individuals were shown a sample online fast food menu and asked to select an item for dinner. 

A control group received a menu with a quick response code label on all items and no climate labels. Another group received a menu with green low-climate impact labels, positively framing options like fish, chicken, or vegetarian options. The third group received a menu with red high-climate labels on items containing red meat, negatively framing the options. 

Results showed 23 percent more participants in the high climate label group ordered a sustainable, non-red meat option, and 10 percent more in the low-climate group ordered a sustainable option, compared with controls.