Lancaster University researchers investigating consumer attitudes and behaviours around plastic food packaging have found UK households are ‘wishcycling’ rather than recycling – and say it’s a problem that everyone - government, food producers, waste management and residents – has to solve.

Wishcycling – the act of putting packaging in recycling bins and hoping for the best, rather than knowing it’s recyclable – is something households are doing due to confusing product labels and differing recycling facilities around the country, experts warn.

The academics behind Lancaster University’s Plastic Packaging in People’s Lives (PPiPL) project have been working hand-in-hand with supermarkets, businesses, charities and waste management companies for the last 3.5 years to explore the ins and outs of how the UK thinks and acts when it comes to plastic food packaging.

Today, a suite of reports is published to highlight their findings, offering recommendations to help reduce the UK’s plastic usage and contribute towards the UK’s Plastics Pact goals. A total of 552 people and 91 organisations were involved in the research via interviews with consumers and households, workshops, supply chain companies and waste management facility visits.

“We have studied the plastic packaging cycle – from the moment plastic is made through to how it is used by suppliers, experienced by customers and then treated in the waste process, to get a full picture of the UK’s attitudes and behaviours towards plastic food packaging,” Lancaster University’s Professor Maria Piacentini, Co-Principal Investigator of the PPiPL project explains.

“Our results suggest some UK households really care about the planet and try their best, but reducing food waste in their homes is as much a priority as minimising plastic – and can sometimes trump concerns over packaging.

“We also find a reluctance to wash and recycle some packaging through fears of contamination – for instance from raw meat or fish packets. Residents are more likely to throw this sort of recyclable waste into the normal bin or contaminate their household recycling by not washing the containers, which can cause far greater contamination further on in the recycling process. This is important for policymakers to understand if we are to achieve the ambitions set out in the UK Plastics Pact.”

The study also finds people tend to guess whether food packaging is recyclable from how the packet feels, rather than studying the container to determine whether it is recyclable and accepted by their local council due to confusion around packaging labels and symbols.

“The inconsistency in waste collection services across UK councils is still complicating matters, as we can encounter different waste and recycling facilities at home, work and when we are out and about,” Dr Alison Stowell, co-principal investigator for the PPiPL project adds. “If the UK fulfils its ambitions for a ‘simpler, common-sense approach’ to recycling through standardisation of bin collection services, and food producers worked with On-Pack Recycling Label (OPRL) to create uniform labelling, recycling could be a lot less confusing and more effective for us all.”

As part of the project, members of the PPiPL academic team also embedded themselves in two separate businesses for between 3-6 months to fully explore the use of plastic in the firms and their supply chains, as well as understand customer demands and experiment with alternative plastic packaging. As a result of the project, one of the firms re-wrote its specifications for its own supply chains, to transport more food in bulk and reduce the amount of plastic used in transportation.

The experimentation with alternative packaging uncovered a variety of issues and highlighted the strengths and value of plastic for food safety and transportation. Meanwhile, supply chain research uncovered the environmental challenges posted by alternative food packaging due to the lack of waste management infrastructure set up to recycle these on a grand scale.

The team also ran a pilot project with Booths supermarket, to ‘live’ test their research findings on consumers.

Dr Stowell explains: “We discovered some supply chain firms believed customers would reject packaging made from some recycled plastics due to imperfections or flecks in the containers which they thought customers would find off-putting. The dynamic element of our research enabled us to put this perception to the test, so we went and tested it out with customers in a large supermarket – and found this to be largely untrue.”

Recycling being processed at a waste management facility (Adobe images)

The new suite of reports outline the in-depth findings of the project and intend to help steer consumers, retailers, suppliers, waste management as well as policymakers at a local and national level towards collective solutions to the pinch points that inhibit the drive towards the more effective use of plastic and cleaner, greener growth.

Among their recommendations, experts reinforce the need for:

• Supporting pre-competitive spaces where organisations involved in the circular food supply chain can work together to share problems and best practice to help drive innovation in sustainable packaging
• The ‘simpler, common-sense approach’ to recycling requiring uniformity in recycling collections and facilities to ease confusion
• Producers and brands to design packaging using texture or colour to make packaging more noticeable to consumers
• Customers to pay greater attention to the food packaging they purchase
• Residents to sort, wash and squash their household recycling to save space, reduce the carbon footprint in transit and increase opportunities for secondary use
• Households to regularly check their local council’s guidelines and prevent contamination via ‘wishcycling’

The concerns and recommendations raised in the reports are now being shared with supply chains, waste management, councils and government in the hope that changes can be made to make recycling easier for consumers. The PPiPL team are also using their research to develop a new initiative called ‘In the Loop’ to facilitate communication between Booth supermarket, their customers, and Lancaster City Council (LCC) on several interconnected issues, including recycling, plastic packaging circularity, and food packaging innovations.

PPiPL’s multi-disciplinary research team is comprised of Lancaster University experts in consumer insights, supply chain management, waste management and material science. The team includes Dr Alison Stowell, Professor Maria Piacentini, Dr Charlotte Hadley, Dr Clare Mumford, Professor James Cronin, Marta Ferri, Dr John Hardy, Professor Linda Hendry, Dr Harris Kaloudis, Dr Ghadafi Razak, Professor Alex Skandalis and Dr Savita Verma.

PPiPL’s industry partners include Preston Plastics, Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, Waitrose, Booths, Butlers Cheeses, Bells of Lazonby, Lancaster City Council, Biotech services, Suez, Chartered Institution of Wastes Management.