Materials & Packaging

How Does Consumer Behavior Challenge the Circular Economy?

Economic models shift slowly, and consumer habits are hard to break. A shift from linearity to circularity won’t happen overnight, but there are tangible ways businesses can help consumers shift their behaviors today.

Sponsored Content | / This article is sponsored by Sustana | By Sustana | Published 3 months ago | About a 6 minute read

Image: Sustana

Consumers are looking to adopt sustainable habits into their day-to-day lives. And in that ever-evolving push towards everyday sustainability, the concept of a circular economy — where materials are continually reused and repurposed, extending their lifespan for as long as they remain useful — has gained significant traction.

From sustainable fashion to reusable packaging and glass bottle return and recycling programs, many companies have found circular solutions that customers have shown they are willing to adopt. But often, somewhere through the cycle, the circle is broken.

Consumers’ intention-action gap

There’s real evidence that consumers want to see a shift towards a sustainable and circular economy. The barrier is not one of will; yet, there remains a gap between consumers’ intentions and their actions.

Economic models shift slowly, and consumer habits are hard to break. Despite their best intentions, consumers tend to do what is most convenient. In 2022, ING conducted a study — Learning from consumers: How shifting demands are shaping companies’ circular economy transition — that showed people are willing to make sustainable buying decisions but are more likely to do so when minimal effort is required.

In most cases, consumers are even willing to pay more for sustainable choices. In a 2023 global McKinsey survey, 4 to 7 percent of consumers expressed a willingness to pay over 10 percent more for sustainable packaging. This is where businesses come in.

While the term ‘circular economy’ is becoming more commonplace, you’re much less likely to hear people referring to its counterpart — the linear economy, which has been the default for hundreds of years. There’s a reason why the linear economy is sometimes referred to as a take-waste-make-waste model: It’s convenient, and it makes it incredibly easy for consumers to consume.

Participating in a circular economy requires effort. It first takes a conscious breaking of habits, then additional extra steps toward sustainability — sorting recycling, understanding the lifecycles of goods, etc. If one model is easy and the other is hard, which do you think people will choose?

How businesses can help bridge the gap

Image credit: Sustana

As we’ve seen, shifting people’s habits requires more than just buy-in. It also requires ease and accessibility.

This is why businesses need to play a role in providing convenient solutions. Doing so reduces the amount of necessary behavior change. Instead, businesses can enable consumers to make choices that are better for the planet, by default.

A 2023 survey by Two Sides North America shows that most consumers prefer paper-based packaging for its environmental benefits — prompting brands to reevaluate their packaging strategies.

When it comes to embracing circularity, paper is a pioneer. Paper products are inherently renewable, recyclable and biodegradable. People are already used to recycling paper, which removes a barrier and promotes material reuse. When used for packaging, paper fits seamlessly into a circular economy: easily collected and recycled, ensuring its valuable fibers are used again and again.

We already see this happening in the tech space: Google, for instance, is working to improve its plastic footprint by working with vendors and suppliers to phase out products with single-use plastics and using materials that are recyclable or compostable. Amazon, meanwhile, has replaced 95 percent of its plastic air packaging with fully recyclable paper filler and is on track to remove its plastic packaging in North America altogether.

From coffee cups to food containers, paper is now a go-to material across many different retail and manufacturing fields. Indeed, the number-one trend identified by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition in its 2024 sustainable packaging trends report is "the paperization of everything;" demand for paper packaging is increasing at a rate of 3.5 percent per year.

Paper's circular utility

Consumers are drawn to paper packaging for several reasons. It’s naturally recyclable, so it doesn't always require virgin tree material. Paper from the "urban forest"— consisting of sorted office paper, cups, cartons and other fiber-based materials recovered from recycling bins and processed at facilities across North America — can be repurposed to create new paper products.

For packaging, paper is also visually appealing and premium-feeling due to its texture and print quality; it’s malleable for artistic designs and is associated with sustainability.

L’Oréal USA’s Seed Phytonutrients brand, for example, demonstrates the potential of paper packaging. For its skin and hair products, the company has created a visually appealing paper-based bottle made from recycled materials that's not only recyclable but also shower-proof — a great example of how brands can use creative, practical design to meet consumer demand for circular products.

For food packaging, having access to safe options is top-of-mind for consumers. As people become more aware of the harms of microplastics and other byproducts of non-sustainable packaging, they are searching for alternatives. In the earlier cited McKinsey study, respondents named hygiene, food safety and shelf life as the most important product packaging characteristics when making a purchase.

Companies such as Sustana® address these needs by using sustainable, recycled fiber for food packaging that is compliant with FDA standards for use in direct food contact packaging without the need of a barrier of any type.

Despite growing public familiarity with the concept, there’s still effort required by companies to reduce friction and make circularity the standard. According to a report by the European Environment Agency, achieving circularity requires a shift in pricing, standards and supply. The emphasis for waste management should be on switching to high-quality, recyclable materials. Among the eight secondary raw material markets assessed in the report, three are classified as well-functioning: aluminum, glass and paper.

Sustana keeps all of these considerations in mind. Our mission is to develop sustainable solutions with clean materials and a circular mindset — making sustainability an ingredient in everyday products.

A shift from linearity to circularity won’t happen overnight, but there are tangible steps that businesses can take to help consumers shift their behaviors today. It’s not all or nothing — impactful changes can come all along the way.