FreeThink: Kitchen 07:Sustainable Packaging

FreeThink: a blog published by Maxwell PR

Kitchen 07:Sustainable Packaging

Gwynne Rogers, LOHAS Director at the Natural Marketing Institute, presented research pertaining to attitudes and perceptions of the general public vs. LOHAS consumers. LOHAS - Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability - refers to both consumers and the marketplace. Though making up only 16% of the population, LOHAS is a $209 Billion industry in the US.

Gwynne noted that when products are promoting themselves as "sustainable," it is important for them to promote the specifics of what that means, as the majority of the population doesn't really know what the term "sustainable" means.

81% of LOHAS consumers want to know what companies are doing to reduce trash. Both LOHAS and general public consumers' top concerns regarding packaging is whether or not it is recyclable and environmentally friendly. However, when it comes to food and beverage products, packaging ranks as the least important factor to consumers (taste being most important).

If a company is thinking about moving towards environmentally-friendly packaging, it's critical to consider the product’s consumer. LOHAS customers are most likely to notice and purchase an item based on its packaging. This is particularly true when it comes to personal care - two-thirds want recycled packaging, much higher than food and beverage.

Gwynne also made a point that in many cases, re-using can be much better than recycling. During their studies, NMI found several unique cases of packaging re-use. The most interesting of these was rinsing out TV dinner containers for future use at picnics.

Many in the audience were interested in finding out more about the best materials to use in e-friendly packaging and resources for securing these and find the difficulty in locating this information to be extremely frustrating. NMI is planning more information on this in future studies.

posted on April 27, 2007

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