Topic: CONSUMER AWARENESS AND ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE

RECYCLED PACKAGING

Introduction:
Recycling:
Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects.
The recovery of energy from waste materials is often included in this concept. The
recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the properties it had in its
virgin or original state. It is an alternative to "conventional" waste disposal that can
save material and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling can prevent the
waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw
materials, thereby reducing: energy usage, air pollution, and water pollution.

Recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction and is the third component
of the "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle" waste hierarchy. Thus, recycling aims at
environmental sustainability by substituting raw material inputs into and redirecting
waste outputs out of the economic system. There are some ISO standards related to
recycling such as ISO 15270:2008 for plastics waste and ISO 14001:2015 for
environmental management control of recycling practice.

Recyclable materials include many kinds of glass, paper, cardboard boxes, metal,

plastic, tires, textiles, batteries, and electronics. The composting or other reuse
of biodegradable waste such as food or garden waste is also a form of
recycling. Materials to be recycled are either delivered to a household recycling centre
or picked up from curbside bins, then sorted, cleaned, and reprocessed into new
materials destined for manufacturing new products.

The human population is increasing and so are the needs of the people. But are there
enough natural resources to service all our needs. There may be, but in case there
aren't, and the resources do simply finish, are we going to leave the posterity nothing?
Sounds like a terrible eventuality indeed. Hence, depleting resources or not, we need
to start recycling so that the generations to come too can enjoy the resources their
ancestors enjoyed.
Importance of recycling:
 Recycling Conserves Resources

When we recycle, used materials are converted into new products, reducing the need
to consume natural resources. If used materials are not recycled, new products are
made by extracting fresh, raw material from the Earth, through mining and forestry.
Recycling helps conserve important raw materials and protects natural habitats for the
future.

 Recycling saves energy

Using recycled materials in the manufacturing process uses considerably less energy
than that required for producing new products from raw materials – even when
comparing all associated costs including transport etc. Plus there are extra energy
savings because more energy is required to extract, refine, transport and process raw
materials ready for industry compared with providing industry-ready materials.

 Recycling helps protect the environment

Recycling reduces the need for extracting (mining, quarrying and logging), refining
and processing raw materials all of which create substantial air and water pollution.
As recycling saves energy it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which helps to
tackle climate change. Current UK recycling is estimated to save more than 18 million
tonnes of CO2 a year – the equivalent to taking 5 million cars off the road.

 Recycling reduces landfill

When we recycle, recyclable materials are reprocessed into new products, and as a
result the amount of rubbish sent to landfill sites reduces. There are over 1,500 landfill
sites in the UK, and in 2001, these sites produced a quarter of the UK’s emissions of
methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Packaging:
Packaging is a science, art and technology of enclosing or protecting products for
distribution, storage, sale, and use. Packaging also refers to the process of designing,
evaluating, and producing packages. Packaging can be described as a coordinated
system of preparing goods for transport, warehousing, logistics, sale, and end use.

Purpose of packaging:

 Protection:

The primary purpose of packaging is to protect its contents from any damage that
could happen during transport, handling and storage. Packaging retains the product
intact throughout its logistics chain from manufacturer to the end user. It protects the
product from humidity, light, heat and other external factors. This is the most
important purpose of packaging. Because of that it is not unusual to end up with far
more packaging than the actual product. Especially when ordering items from online
stores. The amount of packaging waste the product leaves behind can be really
staggering. All in all, packaging’s purpose is to protect, but there is a difference
between an intelligent and well-designed packaging and a packaging with no fit-to-
purpose design.

 Safety:

Packaging has an important role in keeping its contents and consumers safe.

Packaging should contain important information of the product and its safety. For
example, for food products the packing date, best before date and a list of
ingredients must be clearly visible on the packaging. No harmful chemical, smell, or
taste should transfer from packaging materials to the food whether it is produced
from virgin material or recycled material. Moreover, it must become clear from the
packaging if it contains toxic substances. All these pieces of information add the
product safety for the consumer. Too much information is always better than no
information at all.

 Attractiveness:

Packaging counts an important part of the product brand and marketing. A unique

packaging can increase the product attractiveness and thus affect to the willingness to
buy the product. Packaging is as important as the product itself. Its purpose is to stand
out from the shelf or website, enhance sales, provide relevant information on the
product and augment interest. Two thirds of people say that the packaging has
an effect on their buying decisions. A packaging can also tell a whole story about the
business behind the product and the product’s environmental, social and economic
impacts. It is a tool to communicate company’s values and great benefits that the
product brings to the consumer.

 Convenience :

Packages can have features that add convenience in distribution, handling, stacking,

display, sale, opening, reclosing, using, dispensing, reusing, recycling, and ease
of disposal

 Marketing :

Packaging and labels can be used by marketers to encourage potential buyers to

purchase a product. Package graphic design and physical design have been important
and constantly evolving phenomena for several decades. Marketing
communications and graphic design are applied to the surface of the package and
often to the point of sale display. Most packaging is designed to reflect the brand's
message and identity on the one hand while highlighting the respective product
concept on the other hand.

Types of packaging:

Cardboard boxes

These boxes are commonly used to pack and carry heavy items such as electronics,
appliances, wine, fruit, and vegetables. Moreover, wholesalers use them to package
bulk products. Besides that, they are strong and durable because of their layered paper
material. Its main strength comes from the wavy ripple in the middle. They are called
corrugated because of these ripples.
.

Most importantly, these boxes are environmentally friendly. They can be reused and
recycled for different purposes as well. These boxes are stronger and more durable
than cardboard boxes but are usually confused with them. Read this blog post to pick
out which box to use for shipping your products. Also, you can find out about
different types of corrugated cardboard types in this blog.

 Paperboard Cartons:

This is the thin, lighter weight carton commonly used to carry a single item such as
breakfast cereal, shoes, crackers, and a toy. It does not have the wavy middle layer
(corrugating medium) to add box strength.
Other uses for boxboard include as cores and tubes, graphic board, partitions, and
displays. Boxboard also has non-packaging uses, as the top and bottom layer in
gypsum wallboard products, and it is commonly used and reused for children’s arts
and crafts.

Crates

Crates and pallets are a very important packaging option for shipping. They keep the
actual goods safe and help lift them off the surface to avoid any damage. Thus,
protecting against dirt and moisture.

Paper Bags

Paper bags are the most common packaging items. Used to pack your groceries at the
local supermarket, let you take-away your meal from a restaurant, and carry flour or
cement, these bags are versatile. Besides that, paper bags help you save money, and
you can get them printed beautifully to increase the aesthetic demand of what you sell
inside it.

Also, they do not contribute to environmental pollution as plastic bags do. Easily
decomposable, renewable, and also recyclable to produce more paper, paper bags are
a great choice for your product packaging.

Plastic or Polyethylene Bags

This is the cheapest packaging material available in the market. With that, it’s fairly
durable and functional. Usually used for food, plants, flowers and newspapers
packaging. Most importantly, it’s more commonly used, and most retail shopkeepers
and small scale businesses use them as their basic packaging medium.

Bottle Packaging
You can use plastic bottles abundantly for packaging purposes as well. Mostly used
for medicine, cosmetics, and other liquid products, these bottles are functional and
affordable. In addition to that, they are space-efficient. This means they can help save
space on your shelves. Similarly, you can reuse them for different purposes to prolong
their utility.

Besides that, it’s also easy to print advertisements and other details on these bottles.
They are unbreakable, therefore ideal for liquids, as they will not break and create a
mess in case of an accident.

Label and symbols used on packaging:

Many types of symbols for package labelling are nationally and internationally
standardized. For consumer packaging, symbols exist for product
certifications, trademarks, proof of purchase, etc.
 Some requirements and symbols exist to communicate aspects of consumer rights
and safety, for example the CE marking or the estimated sign that notes conformance
to EU weights and measures accuracy regulations. Examples of environmental and
recycling symbols include the recycling symbol, the recycling code , and the "Green
Dot". Food packaging may show food contact material symbols. In the European
Union, products of animal origin which are intended to be consumed by humans have
to carry standard, oval-shaped EC identification and health marks for food safety and
quality insurance reasons.

Bar codes, Universal Product Codes, and RFID labels are common to allow

automated information management in logistics and retailing. Country-of-
origin labelling is often used. Some products might use QR codes or similar matrix
barcodes. Packaging may have visible registration marks and other printing calibration
and troubleshooting cues.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE

 Elham Rahbar, Nabsiah Abdul Wahid, (2011)

A survey was carried out on 250 Chinese, Malay, Indian and other races that
represent the Penang population. Factor analysis, Cronbach alpha and multiple
regressions were used to identify factors impact on Penang consumers actual
purchase behavior. The result revealed that customer's trust in eco-label and
eco-brand and their perception of eco-brand show positive and significant
impact on their actual purchase behavior.
 Tan Booi Chen, Lau Teck Chai (2010)
This paper is essentially exploratory in nature and has two objectives. The
first objective is to compare gender with attitudes towards the Environment
and green products. The second objective is to investigate the relationship
between attitude towards the environment and green products. Result from the
independent sample t-test shows that there were no significant differences
between gender in their environmental attitudes and attitudes on green
products. The rotated factor matrix validated the underlying dimensions of
environmental attitudes into three major dimensions (environmental
protection, government’s role, and personal norm). Results from the multiple
linear regression analysis revealed that consumer attitudes on the
government’s role and their personal norm towards the environment
contributed significantly to their attitude on green product. Further
investigation revealed that personal norm was the most important contributor
to the attitude towards green product. However, environmental protection did
not contribute significantly to consumers’ attitudes on green product.
 Leila Hamzaoui Essoussi, Jonathan D. Linton, (2010)
 This paper aims to consider the price premium that consumers state they are
willing to pay for products with reused or recycled content. It also aims to
address the effect of the impact of product category on consumers' willingness
to pay premium prices.  Perceived functional risk is an important determinant
of the price that consumers are willing to pay for products that have recycled
or reused content. It was also found that consumers will switch from a
recycled product to a new product within a smaller range of price for products
with high functional risk.
 Jennifer Acevedo( May/Jun 2009)
This paper show how many brand owners spend a commendable amount of
time analyzing the environmental footprint of their packaging and specifying
materials that are easily accepted into the recycling stream. But what becomes
of what's collected, and what about the less recycling-stream-friendly
materials? They founded Recycling with an innovative and unique vision.
They identified the gap between the amount of materials being recycled and
the number of products created with those materials and created the Preserve
brand to explore fresh ways to reuse and recycle everyday items that were
frequently thrown away
 John Kalkowski( Jan 2009)
The researcher in this paper refers the period of six months in which the use of
recycled packaging materials was flying high. End users were demanding
post-consumer waste be included in their packaging as part of their
sustainability efforts. Even though prices for recycled commodities such as
corrugated, plastics, paper, steel and aluminum were at all-time highs, they
were competitive with virgin materials. Recyclers were actually making a
profit- enough to share the wealth with municipalities that helped collect the
materials. .
 Nik Ramli Nik Abdul Rashid (2009)
In 1996 Standards and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (SIRIM)
lunched the national eco-labeling program verifying products according to
environmental criteria such as Environmentally Degradable, Non-toxic Plastic
Packaging Material, Hazardous Metal-Free Electrical and Electronic
Equipment, Biodegradable Cleaning Agents and Recycled Paper. This paper
approaches the introduction of eco-label with two perspectives in mind.
Firstly, while earlier studies from the western scholars use eco-label as a part
of the augmented product, this study introduces eco-label as a separate
moderating variable. Secondly, the choice of employees working in ISO14001
certified organization as the study population explore a potentially conducive
place to initiate a systematic effort in developing a green consumer
community. The result is very encouraging. This study has clearly shown that,
with some exposure to environmental related experiences (such as those who
 were working with organization implementing the EMS) Malaysian consumer
would indeed react positively to the eco-label.
 Brent Felgner ( Jul 30, 2007)
 This research paper is mainly focus onWal-Mart suppliers have always felt
pressured for lower prices and greater efficiencies. Now the giant retailer is
"encouraging" its thousands of vendors to ratchet back their packaging, all in
the name of sustainability. The company wants to achieve a 5% reduction in
packaging by 2013. To get there it has created a mini-infrastructure to help
its suppliers and potential suppliers along.
 Ellen Groves (Apr 10, 2007)
The main focus of this paper is the cosmetics industry is hoping to make the
Earth a more beautiful place - one recyclable jar at a time. Given the upswing
in consumer awareness about environmental issues, beauty brands are
increasingly opting for greener packaging. Brands like Aveda and Natura are
offering eco-friendly containers made from materials such as recycled plastic
and cornstarch, while others are taking the recycling theme even further by
embedding seeds in outer cartons, which can later grow into plants.
"Consumers are being educated to be conscientious about packaging waste
and that's filtering through to our beauty products.
 Gerard Prendergast, Leyland Pitt(1996)
This paper finds that the primary function of sales packaging is to protect the
product until it is ready for use. The marketing function carries the most
influence within the organization when it comes to making the sales package
decision and, in the majority of cases, sales packaging accounts for less than
10 per cent of overall product costs. Claims the majority of respondents did
not see a trade-off between the marketing and logistical function of the sales
package and the environmental demands to reduce, recycle and/or reuse sales
packaging. However, reports that respondents did agree that sales packaging is
a major environmental concern and, assuming it is not possible to have a sales
package which both enhances the salability of the product and is compatible
with the environment, the ability of the sales package to sell the product is
more important than its compatibility with the environment.
 S.R. Ridge, C. Cull(1993)
This paper of the recycling of food packaging materials within the UK is
described, given the introduction of the EEC Directive on the containers of
liquids for human consumption (85/339/EEC). There is considerable energy
savings associated with recycling. Glass and metals can be effectively
recycled, but participation levels are too low. The main conclusion is that there
are few technical problems associated with recycling — but there is a major
political problem. Until such time as the electoral system is changed to
proportional representation, the importance of ecological issues will be poorly
represented.
 Terrance L. Pohlen, M. Theodore Farris(1993):
This paper on recycling has experienced rapid growth as a technique to reduce
the solid waste stream volume. Despite the public appeal and acceptance of
recycling, the reverse logistics channels used in recycling have received
minimal attention. However, the reverse channels' membership and
capabilities have a significant impact on the efficiency of processing
recyclable material for remanufacture into recycled products. Differing
product characteristics, extensive handling, and low density shipments pose
considerable obstacles to establishing an efficient reverse channel for
recyclable commodities. A framework, based on interviews and current
literature, describes the reverse logistics channel structure, membership and
functions, and provides a foundation for identifying the issues affecting
efficiency and marketability, and possible future directions for improving
efficiency within the reverse channel structure.
 Victor Gray, John Guthrie(1993)
This paper shows that there is little doubt that consumers and manufacturers
are becoming more environmentally conscious about packaging. An overview
is provided of recent trends in packaging from the points of view of the
consumer, the legislators, and the manufacturers. The opportunities open to
the marketer are highlighted as this new consumer group emerges and
discusses the need for the companies involved to address the whole issue of
their own ethical standards within the company.
 Grilli Frank(1993)
This paper covers waste management by: (1) prevention, i.e. reduction of
quantity or harmfulness of waste; (2) recovery, especially recycling; and (3)
disposal, as a last resort. Discusses the impact of the directive on companies
involved and how much can realistically be recycled; and that products cannot
be recycled indefinitely. Also discusses the marking of packaging to indicate
that it is reusable, recoverable, and its composition; and considers the value of
this information to the consumer and those involved with disposal and waste
management.
 S.R. Ridge, C. Cull, (1993)
The main conclusion is that there are few technical problems associated with
recycling — but there is a major political problem. Until such time as the
electoral system is changed to proportional representation, the importance of
ecological issues will be poorly represented.
 Rod Sara, (1993)
Paperboard packaging is regarded as a most ecologically sound and
environmentally friendly packaging option, with benefits in product
protection, waste and disposal properties and easy recyclability. New Zealand
has a paperboard packaging industry, small by international standards,
manufacturing 245,000 tonnes of packaging annually. Over 100,000 tonnes of
recycled fiber (25 per cent of all paper and paperboard consumed in New
Zealand is recovered for recycling) are included in packaging boards for a
variety of uses.
 R.C. Coles, B. Beharrell, (1993)
They Develops and exemplifies the proposition that the key factors
determining the success of packaging innovation can be unified by considering
them as consumer driven, technology driven, and distribution driven. The
concept of the packaging and distribution mix is developed to show how
organizations can respond, through marketing variables under their control, to
attempt to gain a competitive advantage over rivals. A packaging optimization
strategy is described, based on a total systems approach, which proposes a
balance between the complex mix of external influences.