History of human evolution and technical progress is a testament to visionaries, curiosity and a need survive. One of the biggest challenges of modernity and a key to our survival in the next century is transformation from wasteful societies to a more sustainable living. Environmental damage by waste from consumer goods like food, household necessities and beauty products create variety of long-term operational and business issues for corporations to solve, including brand image erosion, legal and reputational risks, ever-increasing consumer concerns over business and brand ethics.
Creating a less-plastic future requires a new visionary approach from the leaders of the industry to cohabitate linear and circular models in production and marketing of these products. Reuse and deposit return models where packaging is returned for a small fee or circulates to be cleaned by producers can help to achieve ‘less plastic future’. However, it will take political will, investment with less linear view on ROI, and perseverance from the key players of the industry. Right now, however, it seems that the progress is stalling because key stakeholders are stuck in the vicious cycle of endless discussions of push and pull dynamics of who needs to do more to enable the transition in single-use packaging: is it the governments? the consumers? the retailers? the producers or the innovators?
REUSE NPDs are the kind of circularity innovations that address changing sustainability context by creating new consumer behaviors which minimize waste. Yet, they require new approach to consumer marketing, education, training which eventually should lead to long-term behavior change where people adopt new consumption traits less dependent on single-use packaging. However, in order to do this, consumer goods producers need to shift their framing of sustainable innovations from conventional ‘consumer needs’ paradigm into a new model framed into a more plant positive agenda.
The key to scale reusability by consumers is about three things:
1. Re-thinking consumer-centric innovation models and framing sustainable innovations into a new reusability category:
In classical consumer marketing we were conditioned to believe that all innovations should be launched with consumer-centric mindset driven to satisfy the specific need of people which can be resolved with certain product or service. In corporate world, organizational decision making heavily relies on consumer need/desirability for ‘go/no-go’ decisions for new or existing product launches. Too often, however, ‘the consumer’ becomes a theoretical construct in strategic thinking. The problem with plastic reduction, however, is not rooted into human need. On the contrary, it is supposed to solve human addiction to single-use plastic which is at core of most operating models of consumer goods producers. Therefore, our job as marketers is resolve the addiction of consumers to single use packaging and transform shopping trips into new traits by promoting new behavior focused on reusability.
2. Persevering with sustainable innovations by fostering new consumer behavior via scaling reuse pilots:
As with any new human behavior, harnessing reuse requires perseverance. Doing something once does not guarantee repeatable sustainable behavior. There are many instances where organizations quickly lose focus and strategic patience by piloting NPD in the area of sustainability and failing to follow through with the right long-term strategy and investment. Most of the negative sentiment towards reusability implies that consumers are not ready to change their behavior, thus, scaling is questionable and, therefore, future profits are at risk. But the barriers for sustainable innovations, including reuse, are about perseverance in creating new retail infrastructure, consumer user experience, in-store convenience and lack of motivation to continue with habit which simply takes time, motivation, and training. Successful packaging deposit models around the world are the testament that it can be done with the right vision, investment and perseverance of the key stakeholders.
3. Building production and operating systems fit to cohabitate single use packaging products and reusable models:
The difficulty of transformation from single-use packaging for big food and other consumer good companies remains with the fact that its production is highly optimized with lines designed to hit scale, low costs per unit and high profit to deliver value to their shareholders. Traditional operations are set to products and innovations by design operate in the low-risk linear economy paradigm (‘take-make-waste’). As a result, current system is structured to manage stability instead of addressing changing sustainability context. This dynamic makes majority of consumers addicted to single-use packaged goods as a matter of convenience driven by low shelf-price and scale.
Therefore, the job of the leaders of the industry is to make sure that investment is funneled not only into new production lines and advertisement of traditional innovations in regular packaging, but also into new reusable models and education of consumers which would enable long-term success and ROI. There are many instances where reusability is already a success and a scale behavior.
In Nordic countries circular models on plastic and glass beverages packaging engage staggering 98% of consumers. In South Korea emerging trend of reusability of food delivery packaging reached 50% of consumers. Aarhus in Denmark is the first city in the world to launch a three-year trial program to reuse coffee cups via a deposit return system. So, the trend is clear, and it is our job to push the industry to move along.
