Will the supply chain respond to demands on plastic?
The solution to going plastic free is Rubik’s Cube-like in its complexity. This is in no small part dictated by a firmly entrenched UK supply chain.
We are a global leader in the plastics economy, operating at the cutting edge of technology. The market has an annual sales turnover of over £23.5bn and employs 170,000 people. Any form of change will be tricky to say the least.
The industry is a dominant player worldwide in the three core elements that make up the plastics sector: material and additive manufacture, material processing and machinery manufacture.
There are some 6,200 firms engaged in the UK plastics industry, and in order for a brand to make significant changes towards a sustainable future, we need to reconsider the entire supply chain.
Customer insights, and how they relate to plastic manufacture, are key to that process. As we discovered, a majority of end users - consumers - are demanding change to help them reduce waste and attempt to live more plastic-free lifestyles.
Ultimately, a green revolution in plastics may boil down to people’s demands translating into downward pressure from brands, to the supply chain that provides them with packaging solutions of all shapes and sizes.
How can brands think differently?
Here are some key principles that companies can adhere to in order to bring about required change:
CUSTOMERS: Identify the relative utility of going plastic free. Using simple analytics, you can determine how much value having a plastic-free option can have in consumers’ minds and forecast accordingly.
SOURCING: One of the key challenges of providing plastic-free alternatives is finding supply-chain partners that can offer packaging that conforms to health and safety standards, and at a viable cost.
However, new and scalable options are increasingly available. If you are unsure about the suitability for products, we can help you test packaging with consumers to discover what trade-off they are willing to make to be plastic free (e.g. bulk purchases).
EDUCATION: For such initiatives to work, the entire organisation needs to be onside and making sustainability part of their everyday work ethic. It will be crucial to pick the right processes to implement so people understand the value of sustainability.
PEOPLE AND PROCESS: To encourage consistency, consider making sustainability part of each individual’s job spec and performance review, so that the whole organisation is pointing in the same direction.
TEST BEFORE YOU INVEST: Agile approaches to product development help test new ideas before you implement large-scale launches, allowing you to see how new initiatives will perform in-market.
Of course, the supply chain isn’t lying idle. One glance at the sustainability section of industry news website Plastics Today reveals myriad ways firms are attempting to make changes. If anything can move the needle on plastic-free living it’s innovation. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention.
The important thing is to remember that we all have a role to play; as individuals, societies, brands of all shapes and sizes, and the vast supply chain that churns out billions of plastic solutions each year.
As our consumer research found, 43% of people will threaten to stop shopping at their usual supermarket because it doesn’t offer plastic-free alternatives. That will inevitably have an effect on the entire supply network, from brands down to their suppliers. The groundswell of opinion is too large to ignore.
Ultimately, companies need to reconcile short-term sales with long-term strategy by focusing on how they can transform their practices to adapt to growing demand. To do that, they need a clear understanding of customer attitudes and behaviour as society sets its sights on a plastic-free future.
