TOTAL LICENSING
Talking in Circles, Directly With so much noise around recycling and still little by way of a universal approach to it, it stands to reason that today’s consumer remains confused. But out of that confusion, says Products of Change in their regular column for Total Licensing, is a chance for brands to implement better design and instigate better conversations with their audiences. We know the practice by now; drain the milk, squash the plastic bottle down and replace the lid. Shove the result in the recycling bin and wait for the recycling fairies to take it away. It couldn’t be simpler. In fact, so easy is the squash/lid-replace process that 95 per cent of consumers display an assured confidence that they are recycling their plastic bottles with ease, at home, every time. Squash it, lid it, bin it. Simple. No questions asked. Except, and on a mission to find some real, first-hand data on the levels of domestic consumer recycling, someone did start asking questions. That someone is the plastics recycling charity RECOUP, and what they found was more than a small discrepancy when it comes to the actions that consumers think they are taking, versus those that are really taking place. When the success of kerbside collection depends so much on the actions of consumers themselves, it’s an eyeopening truth to discover that it is only 67 per cent of plastic bottles purchased that are getting recycled by the consumer. Look at the data surrounding levels of plastic pots, tubs, and trays being placed in domestic recycling and it’s even more staggering – at an eyewatering 36 per cent.
“Tesco has now removed more than one and a half billion pieces of plastic from its UK business...”
What’s evident, according to RECOUP’s findings, is that consumer sentiment and the reality of their athome actions aren’t always adding up. Of course, it is a tricky topic to navigate. Plastics really is a subject still
mired in confusion. But with a singularity of standard still not in place, and with the labelling of plastics and their recyclability and mixed-signal messaging adding to the recycling noise, is it really any wonder? “It is critical to educate consumers on plastics in order to protect the environment,” Anne Hitch, head of stakeholder and citizen strategy at RECOUP told attendees of a Products of Change platform exclusive webinar earlier this month. “And we’re a team that acts to provide that education – to the public and to businesses – to preserve and protect the physical and natural environment for the public benefit through the promotion of waste reduction and recycling of plastics.” And tapping into its 30 years’ experience in the field of doing just that, RECOUP will tell you that the key element to address is design.
Designing out waste It’s a well-established idea that 90 per cent of a product’s environmental impact is determined at design stage, just as much as it is that the best way to address plastic waste when applying the principle of the Four Rs – Remove, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle – is to design it out of the equation to begin with. The supermarket giant, Tesco, has been making clear headway in doing just this. According to its latest report, the retailer has now removed more than one and a half billion pieces of plastic from its UK business since it first introduced its Four Rs strategy. Among the categories to find its packaging overhauled in such a way, the greetings card industry has worked with Tesco to remove more than 50 million pieces of plastic wrapping from its products. Overall, more than 500 million pieces of unnecessary plastic have been identified and removed
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