You’ve likely seen cardboard boxes with massive recycling symbols, reminding consumers to do their part. In fact, the timeless brown may have been replaced for a punchier green as a symbol of a company’s environmental commitments.
Corporations are making these changes for two prominent reasons. The eco-friendly packaging market is profitable because consumers like supporting ethical companies. Secondly, countless organizations have sustainable metrics they need to hit to be less wasteful. Changing packaging is one of the easiest ways to get there, so how is this influencing buyers?
1. Influence On Purchasing Decisions
Voting with your dollar is a real phenomenon, and 85% of consumers are willing to pay a 9.7% markup for a greener, ethical product. People will spend more if an item has sustainable packaging. This changes mindsets about shopping bills and budgeting behaviors.
Wrapping it in eco-friendly packaging is an efficient way to communicate the object’s monetary and sustainable value with customers. Countless visual cues change purchasing decisions based on packaging alone, including:
- Words like biodegradable, recyclable, compostable and sustainable
- Presence of environmental certifications, like Fair Trade or B Corp
- Materials used
- Percentage of packaging made from upcycled or recycled products
- Clear disposal information
Even something as inconsequential as color could change your mind. How often do people unintentionally associate the color green with sustainability? Packaging can also influence purchasing decisions in this way.
2. Increased Preference For Sustainable Brands
All consumers, families and travelers, need easy-to-recycle options. You eventually become familiar with specific, easily accessible go-to brands. Suddenly, businesses are no longer a consideration if they put their items in packaging destined for landfill.
This means customers become loyal to a brand much faster. More companies choose unsustainable packaging than the alternative, meaning decision fatigue decreases. The simplicity of choice could make consumers more dedicated than ever. The likelihood of being a repeat customer skyrockets, too. This behavior influences a lot more than simple shopping.
3. Perception Of Brand Trustworthiness
Consider how someone dipping their toes in environmentalism will make different vacation decisions. They may make their lodging choice based on how the hotel packages food, coffee and shower products. If things are in disposables or plastic, it’s easy to search for somewhere else nearby with a stronger sustainability commitment.
People correlate eco-friendly packaging with responsible business choices. For example, a supermarket may put greener options at eye level on shelves. This could change someone’s perception about that grocer’s climate ethics.
Tactics like these are strategic to engage buyers with specifically packaged brands. Consumers must always stay aware when shopping to ensure the seller isn’t manipulating them. It doesn’t matter if you trust a brand because of their Earth-friendly wrapper. All buying decisions should be your own instead of nudged to you by a third party.
4. Reduced Carbon Footprints
Changing to sustainable packaging within an organization is likely due to overarching environmental objectives. Sustainable packaging may be the gateway to other efforts to reduce your carbon footprint. Without a product as a catalyst, a buyer may have never thought about the footprint of their food or cosmetic waste. Heightened awareness will lead to individually set decarbonization goals, opening doors to greater advocacy.
Companies may even advertise how materials they used previously hurt the planet. They do this to highlight improvements, urging customers to learn more. The health care industry is known for using polystyrene, a versatile plastic, but it carries a heavy carbon footprint. It pollutes oceans, yet advancements show new packaging alternatives will remove 60,000 polystyrene boxes from the environment.
5. Shift Toward Sustainable Travel Practices
The desire for sustainable packaging changes how consumers buy, but it also shifts what people don’t buy. Corporations need to be aware of these trends as adamantly as they need to know what will convert a customer.
As suggested, the availability of sustainably packaged products may influence someone’s destinations. It also changes consumers’ travel habits. The sustainable packaging revolution may stop an individual’s likelihood of getting a single-use drink at gas stations before traveling. They will bring reusable bags and coffee cups. Maybe they’ll stop supporting travel-size toiletries because there are less wasteful packing options.
6. Encouraged Reuse And Recycling
Sustainable packaging matters only if the consumer disposes it properly at the end of its life cycle. The materials inspire recycling or reuse if it is overtly eco-friendly. It may inspire even more sustainable activity if the packaging includes clear directions on what to do with it after you’re finished. Toilet paper brand, Who Gives a Crap, makes their products out of recycled materials and Earth-friendly bamboo.
The company knows every second a buyer interacts with the items is a chance for marketing, which sounds like it only wants to profit. It wants consumers to spend time with the packaging because it highlights reuse possibilities. Some boxes suggest using it as a cat mansion. You could use their beautiful wrappings as gift paper. It has also gone so far as to put QR codes on the empty paper rolls to occupy people in the bathroom with jokes and facts.
7. Engaged Customers And Companies
Customers will be exposed to more environmental topics and conversations because of packaging. This will lead to buyers educating their peers as they get curious on sustainable topics. Eventually, this could translate to educating brands themselves.
It’s more common than ever to vocalize dissatisfaction for a company on social media or in reviews. It’s equally common for corporations to be caught greenwashing. This is when business advertises what it’s doing for the planet, and consumers discover it was hiding the truth. Passionate consumers will voice advocacy, telling corporations people want better in the eco-friendly packaging market.
The Eco-Friendly Packaging Market And Its Ripple Effect
Sustainable packaging causes a dramatic shift in buyers. It makes them adopt eco-conscious habits, spend money differently and hold companies accountable. The eco-friendly packaging market will only grow as more businesses pledge to reduce their carbon footprints. It may take time for everyone to adopt better practices or to take it a step further and go package-free. But, the trend is a positive one as everyone learns how to use materials better and generate less waste.