The Effects Of Sustainable Packaging On Consumer Purchasing

In order for sustainable development to be achieved, humans need to reduce their effect on the environment by consuming less in terms of resources, and living more lightly on the planet. As difficult as this may sound, there are a number of ways in which this is easily achievable. One of the most effective ways to do this is to alter the way in which we function day-to-day, and to begin to change our homes to make them more efficient in terms of resources. In addition, sustainability is not only about ensuring a future in which we can sustain our society without impacting negatively on our environment, but also but ensuring that everyone can have access to this. Therefore we must look at the triple-bottom line approach and align our movement towards sustainable development with this.

assuage any guilt they might feel about consuming mass quantities of unnecessary, disposable goods by dutifully tossing these items into their recycling bins and hauling them out to the curb each week”. (Westervelt, Amy. "Can Recycling Be Bad for the Environment?" Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 25 Apr. 2012. Web. 5 Dec. 2015). So why is the reason that companies are starting to “Go Green”? Its clearly obvious that the change in America from an industrial country to a environmental country has taught big business how to market environmentalism in mass quantities of their product. The strategy of the consumption-environment mindset are increasing rapidly. If this trend of buying without thinking does not slow down, with problems like not shifting priority from consumption to being environmentally aware, things will certainly worsen. On the topic of green marketing, people often see that green marketing refers to the advertising of objects or products with environmental characteristics to them (Like the Nestle bottle, for example). Terms like “Environmentally Friendly”, “Refillable”, and “Recyclable”, are some of the things people associate with green marketing. In reality

Robert Swan once said “the greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” Two companies that understand this concept are Patagonia and Nike. How they address these issues regarding sustainable business practice vary, however. Both have made it their mission to deliver excellence and make the best quality products within their industries, Patagonia focussing more on outdoor active wear, while Nike is more sports oriented. Part of this process has been developing products from sustainable sources. Patagonia, for example, actively took a stand against chemical intensive cotton in 1994, and has since switched to less harmful means of organic cotton within all their cotton-based products. They are even going the extra

“Many current discussions about sustainability focus on the ways in which human activity...can be maintained in the future without exhausting all of our current resources… there has been a close correlation between the growth of human society and environmental degradation - as communities grow, the environment often declines” (603).

-Initiate and implement the ‘Go Green’ project to promote the sustainability features of our products to customers

Throughout world history, people have come up with brilliant new ideas to make life easier, and as time goes on, research, making food, and getting news, has all become instantaneous. It now only takes the push of a button to cook a thanksgiving meal or the click of a remote to find out what’s happening across the world. These things are often taken for granted, and rarely does someone stop and say: “I wonder what turning on this extra lamp does to the environment?” This statement sounds insignificant when there are people starving in other countries and people are training for the army. Yet, being concerned about the environment is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the environment should be one of the biggest concerns among people, as

The purpose of this paper is to compare the sustainability practices of two companies in the same industry. The two companies chosen for comparison are The Hershey Company and Coca-Cola Enterprises, both of which are in the consumer staples industry. These two corporations are ranked sixth and eighth, respectively, on the Newsweek Top Green Companies in the U.S 2015. They have taken pride in creating sustainable product designs, having environmentally sustainable processes and supply chain management.

times and the present day, we must change the way we interact with our environment. Whether

The industry can be very susceptible to environmental issues together with other manufacturers. With the advent of campaigns toward saving the environment and “going green”, the society is now more concerned with how the industry’s wastes and other by-products are being managed. Using recycled materials and recycling one’s wastes can affect the industry’s over-all image as an environmental advocate.

I took notice of the cups that were thrown out. They were made of paper, much more disposable than the styrofoam previously used. In 2011, a non-profit foundation named As You Sow approached Mcdonald’s looking to help them reduce waste(“As You Sow”). McDonald’s began to work with them and by 2013, they had replaced the styrofoam cups with paper cups in all 14,000 U.S. restaurants. This was a change made after the large corporation received a simple request made by a small non-profit foundation. This shows that these big corporations are willing to work with small non-profit organizations in order to improve the overall environmental friendly aesthetic of their companies. Another example of a sizable company changing their ways due to a suggestion from a relatively small group of individuals can be seen in the changes Walmart made regarding their laundry detergent.. Walmart, in order to enhance their shipping and handling, approached a group of engineers to see what they would propose. This group suggested cutting down container size and filling it with a concentrated detergent (Nicholson). With this elementary, yet useful tip, Walmart began to ship more detergent, and less air and water. Furthermore, they reduced the amount plastic used for detergent containers. This demonstrates how eco-friendly changes can be beneficial to both the planet and businesses.

In other efforts to be environmentally conscience, PepsiCo has reduced the packaging weight of their products by more than three hundred fifty million pounds, which exceeded their goal by more than twenty percent. In addition, PepsiCo has recycled approximately ninety-one percent of the waste, allowing less than nine percent to be sent to landfills. In some of the company facilities around the world as little as one percent of waste is sent to the landfills. Recycling of packaging is another commitment of PepsiCo. This commitment is being accomplished by using materials that are compatible with readily accessible recycling systems. (Environmental Sustainability)

Sustainability is a topic that has become very important in recent years. Sustainability is defined as, “the ability to continue a defined behavior indefinitely.” ("Finding and Resolving the Root Causes of the Sustainability Problem", 2014)

Every living being are directly or indirectly depend on natural environment. Sustainability helps to balance financial, social, and environmental factors to facilitate responsible business decision making over the immediate and long term. . Sustainability refers to meeting the needs of present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Oxford University press 1987, p.43). Sustainability is also being protective and aware of use of natural resources and development that meets the need of present and everything that is need for our survival and well being depends, directly or indirectly on our natural environment. According to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Sustainability is

The company has always operated as a small family business and Joanna is not a family member. She is keen to see the business develop and has therefore arranged a bank facility for an additional $100 000 capital to be used by the business. Joanna wants to utilise their skills to produce the next generation of designs for plastic containers. One of her goals is to refocus the company’s strategies to deal with waste and inefficiencies in the current business operations. She is keen to develop an eco-footprint which measures a product’s impact on the environment, and plans to introduce processes to reduce this impact. She would like to launch the new products, together with the company’s sustainability focus, at the National Plastics Manufacturing Show which is to be held in November 2016. Joanna wants to conduct market research to firstly establish whether there will be an advantage in increasing their product range; secondly to establish what their competitors are selling and plan to do in the short to medium term; and thirdly to identify consumer views on her environmentally friendly initiative. In the proposal it will illustrate the objectives and aims, which will involve research and scope along with the purpose and catalyst, also have primary & secondary research under the methodology.

Product lifecycle pricing provides the firm a systematic way of understanding the true price of a product, including externalities, in their product creation process. In traditionally, the company only considers the costs of the end product. For instance, a company creating a product with multiple components sourced from various manufacturers looks at quality and price of the components to manage the costs of the final end product. Product lifecycle pricing encourages a company to consider the full cost of the subcomponents that make up the final product. Full cost includes not only quality, but a quantitative price attached to each step from the impact to the earth when extracting the materials for the product, the energy used to build the product, the living wage and working conditions of the people who manufactured the product, the impact to the environment in the community where the product was manufactured, and the disposal of the product at the end of its product life (Chandler, & Werther, 2014). If a CSR promoting company does not fully evaluate and understand the lifecycle, starting from the very beginning of the product creation steps, they run the risk of exposing their brand, and reducing brand equity, due to negative press in the event that poor CSR practices occurs anywhere along the lifecycle. Additionally, CSR positively affects supplier behaviors in the business-to-business (B2B) marketplace (Pai, Lai, Chiu, & Yang,