STUDY: Recycling Turns Into Guessing Game For 3 In 5 People

If you have trouble trying to decide if its garbage or recycling yourself – you are not alone. According to a recent study more than half of people feel guilty when they don’t know where an item should go. 58% are just guessing, 64% want more guidance, and 72% think it should be a standardized thing.

Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of all-natural pet food brand Nature’s Logic, the survey of 2,000 people found 64 percent don’t fully understand their local recycling policies.

Here are some other thoughts people had according to this study:

54% believe the recycling system’s efficiency could be improved by broadening the spectrum of recyclable materials.

34% believe that the system can be improved with higher quality sorting machines.

28% say a better education on recycling is a solution.

46% would witch to brands that have more eco-friendly packaging.

44% wouldn’t mind paying more for pet food containers and bags to be more sustainable.

74% believe in moving toward only using recyclable materials, so landfills are obsolete in 100 years.

Additionally, seven in 10 pet owners would rather buy a product clearly labeled with instructions on how to recycle it and 66 percent would prefer to buy a product that is “Certified Plastic Neutral.”

Researchers asked which sectors they believe need to make more of an effort to be eco-friendly. Their list included pet food and supply companies (44%), food and drink companies (41%), and cleaning product companies (39%). With pet companies having the highest demand for more sustainable products, pet owners (about 1,700 respondents) say the most wasteful items are waste pick-up and removal items (46%), cleaning products (45%), and pet food (43%). Fifty-nine percent of pet owners are surprised to learn that most pet food bags are not recyclable, but 79 percent would be willing to spend more on eco-friendly products.

“Creating recyclable pet food packaging is surprisingly more complex and costly than most people think,” explains Caroline Golon, Nature’s Logic vice president of marketing, in a statement. “We, like many businesses, are working diligently on this but in the meantime, we’ve put other sustainable measures in place like making bags that are Certified Plastic Neutral or that use post-consumer recycled materials. Those are two packaging solutions consumers can look for when seeking more eco-friendly packaging.”

“One of the biggest challenges with recycling is educating customers how to recycle certain items. It can be very confusing and not everything can go in curbside recycling as-is,” Golon says. “That’s where on-package instructions come into play.”

Source: https://bit.ly/3ns5xRL