Pouch Recycling Needs to Be Easier to Ensure Survival
After disposable coffee cups and plastic bottles, pouches could be the next target in the waste reduction landscape, due to the difficulty of recycling these packs, says GlobalData (globaldata.com), a data and analytics company. There is confusion over the use of the Green Dot symbol on pouch packs. The symbol is a mark to show that the supplier has made a financial contribution toward recycling them. However many consumers believe it means that these packs can be recycled in household recycling systems. In fact, pouches disposed of in this way, end up being sent for incineration or landfill.
“Growing awareness of this issue is likely to turn consumers off this packaging format. This could particularly be the case in the baby food sector, where pouches have transformed the market over the last 10 years. In 2016 they accounted for the largest segment of total baby meal sales in the U.K. at 43 percent and in the U.S. at 32 percent. Parents of small children are generally more environmentally concerned than many other consumer groups and may reject packaging that has the potential to outlast their children," said Valerie Lincoln-Stubbs, research director at GlobalData.