STATE COLLEGE – After lunch with friends, you go to throw away your trash. There are two options: a trash can and recycling bins. Sorting trash can be time-consuming, especially if you need to leave. You toss your plastic salad container in the recycling bin, but not the right one. Though you think you made an environmentally conscious decision, your plastic ends up in the landfill.
The confusion underscores the challenge of getting consumers and companies to change their behavior amid rising concern about the harmful environmental and health impacts of plastic.
According to the Marine Debris Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, ocean debris damages marine animal habitats. Sea birds often ingest plastic materials in the ocean because they mistake it for food.
Additionally, a 2018 study by a group of Austrian researchers suggested that microplastics are in our digestive system and stool. Microplastics are very small pieces of plastic that have been broken down over time.
National Geographic reports that the largest plastic use is for single-use packaging items. Packaging makes up 161 million tons of the global production of plastic. Every year, eight million metric tons of plastic is discarded in the ocean.
Given such statistics and effects, some companies are changing their standards and processes. Starbucks is removing plastic straws from its stores globally by 2020. Whole Foods Market offers recycled paper bags to its customers.
Last December, Trader Joe’s announced it will be eliminating more than 1 million pounds of plastic from their stores. Even cosmetic brand Burt’s Bees is a member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition and focuses on using post-consumer recycled plastics.
Companies have to consider multiple factors in making greener choices, including the cost of sustainable packaging materials, business infrastructure, and mainly the consumer’s opinion, says Judd Michael, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Penn State. His work focuses on corporate environmental management and sustainable business management.
“Compostable products are more expensive; for instance, cups. They are a little more expensive than plastic and Styrofoam. The other bigger issue is that there is confusion among the customers with what they should do when they are done,” he said.
Michael said another problem is convenience. Most people throw away their plastic goods, especially if they don’t see a receptacle for recyclable goods.
“We know that people are lazy and that is any roadblock to sustainability because we’re all used to convenience,” he said. “The reality today is that we need people to make better decisions.”
According to Michael, consumer behavior influences how businesses and companies implement sustainable packaging. Companies won’t invest in these products if consumers won’t recycle the packaging.
“They can all go to compostable items, but if 90-plus percent of consumers are going to go throw them in the trash anyway, what good is it?” he said.
When it comes to making decisions about recycling, there is a lot of confusion in the marketplace about what makes a product sustainable, according to Karen Page Winterich, a marketing professor at Penn State. Her research and teaching focuses on consumer behavior, primarily customer behavior about sustainability.
“Consumers may see a package that is green or reads ‘natural.’ They may think that it’s sustainable,” she said. “They see that and think it’s good for the environment.”
The use of misleading information and marketing to present products as eco-friendly is known as greenwashing. Winterich said that to combat consumer confusion, companies should use more consistent labeling.
“One of the biggest issues with recycling is lack of awareness, but there’s a lot of myths. One myth is that people think all things go to landfill. These labels can tell people what goes into the trash and what doesn’t,” she said.
How2recycle is one effort by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition to reduce this confusion. The project, established in 2008, created a recycling label system that tells consumers how to prepare materials for recycling and what packaging parts are recyclable.
During his years at Penn State, Professor Jeffrey Catchmark has developed sustainable products for companies. Catchmark is finding ways to give them the durability of plastic materials using naturally derived barriers.
Winterich said recycling contamination is another problem with sustainable packaging.
According to a Waste Management, Inc. article, the average contamination rate is about 25 percent and “1 in 4 items items placed in a recycling container is actually not recyclable.”
High contamination rates are also attributed to waste being mixed with recyclables. Food and liquids soil good materials too. These factors lower the quality of materials, thus some of them end up in landfills.
Yet progress toward sustainable packaging goods is making headway in the laboratories at Penn State. Jeffrey Catchmark, a professor of agricultural biological engineering, specializes in the development of plastic material replacements.
With colleagues and graduate students, he is creating natural coating barriers for bio-based products made of polysaccharides, like starch or cellulose. These liquid barriers secure natural products and give them the functionality of plastic materials.
“Your body isn’t meant to have plastic in it and you’re not meant to eat plastic. We just have to find clever ways to give these natural things the performance of synthetic plastic,” he said.
In one project, Catchmark and his colleagues attempted to make a replacement for packaging peanuts. Unintentionally, they developed a biomedical material for wound care. Catchmark said he hopes the material will eventually be commercialized and approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
“One material could be a wound agent, a packaging material, a new food because it’s biologically derived and it comes from natural materials. That’s the difference and that’s why I’m about the bio-economy and looking at biological materials to solve problems,” he said.
Catchmark, an affiliated faculty member of The Rock Ethics Institute, said people have to be willing to look at their values if they want to live sustainably. Companies have to question their own values and beliefs, like if they believe in social responsibility or support the environment.
“Change is hard for people. Ethical issues emerge when they come into conflict with our values. Some of those values are convenience, time and other things. How do you get people to shift their value priorities? Part of it is listening to the customer,” he said.
“It comes down to a leader having those values and they decide they’re going to do something good. When that happens, a lot can change because leaders can re-orientate the entire place,” Catchmark said. “Companies are a big part of it and if there’s no law they have to conform to then it comes down to how do they come up with their values.”
Dejanae Gibson is a print and digital journalism major at Penn State.