Consumer appetite for sustainable products is rising. Understanding shopper preferences and what shapes them is key to unlocking new markets.
We review research insights into consumer behaviour around biomaterials, including when and why people buy bio.
Sustainable materials in demand
Packaging is a huge niche where biomaterials can offer strong value for customers.
It is one of the biggest applications for plastics globally, accounting for 26% of total production. The oil-based plastics that dominate today are key drivers of pollution and global warming, fuelling government and consumer desire for alternatives.
Yet biobased packaging is a relatively new concept. The first step towards wider acceptance is to build consumer understanding of what they are and their environmental benefits.
Generally, consumers are receptive to the idea of sustainable packaging in general, including biomaterials. In 2022, a UK survey of 1100 respondents found that 80% preferred environmentally friendly materials.
We see this demand for sustainable packaging in a range of markets. In a survey of 781 Chinese consumers, 77% showed awareness of the harms of traditional packaging while 67.2% had some understanding of the benefits of sustainable packaging.
One study found that globally, 72% of consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products.
Price is king
While these are positive signs, we need to acknowledge the difference between consumer awareness and actual purchasing decisions.
In most cases, price is the biggest factor in deciding whether a consumer aware about the benefits of bio will act on this by actually buying more sustainable options.
When the more sustainable option is more costly, some consumers will forego the purchase, believing that the responsibility for absorbing these higher costs lies with big producers and the government rather than themselves.
According to a recent McKinsey survey, the consumer emphasis on price in making packaging decisions has only become more pronounced over recent years as inflation drives up the cost-of-living.
Environmental concerns tend to rank lower although there are exceptions, particularly in European countries like France or Italy.
Biobased versus biodegradable?
The McKinsey survey seems to show that consumers have lost interest in environmental issues. However, this is not quite the case.
Cost has become a growing concern for consumers over the years but, on the whole, people do not care about the environment any less than they did before.
Given that consumers still believe in the importance of environmental factors, what criteria are they using to make purchasing choices that are more sustainable?
Many studies on consumer attitudes towards biomaterials show that knowledge is a powerful influence on purchasing decisions.
Often, a basic understanding of how materials impact the environment and the subtle differences between biomaterials can make a huge difference in what consumers look for.
We see this clearly when it comes to biobased versus biodegradable products. Most people assume that a material made from biological feedstock will biodegrade safely in the environment. However, this is not the case: some plant-based materials can biodegrade in nature, others will biodegrade in specially-equipped industrial plants, and others are not degradable at all.
Whether consumers are aware of this can change how they shop for biomaterials dramatically.
Consumer knowledge matters
A 2023 study published in the Journal of Cleaner Production showed how education on sustainable materials can influence purchasing choices.
It conducted a choice experiment that involved 12,000 Japanese consumers divided into two groups: one was taught the difference between biobased products and biodegradable ones. The other group was not.
The study found that the group that had been educated on the difference between biobased and biodegradable would prefer products that were biodegradable over just biobased. This group had learned that biodegradability is a special property that has to be specifically built into the design of the material – not something that comes automatically.
Informed marketing
Findings like this are vital for the biomaterials industry. It indicates that with better information and education, consumers are more likely to choose biobased products over competitors.
This is especially important for newer startups in the biomaterials industry that have developed materials focused on end-of-life sustainability.
In general, any kind of biomaterial tends to do better than oil plastics when it comes to carbon emissions reduction. However, some plant-based biomaterials can be just as harmful as oil plastics if discarded in the environment.
Many newer biobased startups today are trying to tackle this issue. California’s Cruz Foam have developed a compostable biobased foam that degrades more rapidly and safely than traditional plastic in nature. Companies that use seaweed feedstock tend to fall into this category, including the UK’s Imperial College spinoff FlexSea and London-based NotPla.
However, without consumer awareness around the importance and relative scarcity of biodegradable products on the market today, it is harder for these more sustainable options to find a foothold.
More consumer education on the importance of biodegradability is needed to boost market uptake for newer generations of biomaterials that are less harmful to biodiversity.
Culture matters
Cultural context also matters when it comes to convincing people that biobased is better.
The same study found a strong preference among the Japanese consumers for biobased products that use local feedstock as raw material over imported feedstock. Some of this might be a perception that local safety standards are higher.
Whatever the reason, it means that marketing sustainable goods in Japan demands different approaches to marketing in other parts of the world. Emphasising local feedstock origin more than environmental qualities could be a more effective strategy in a country that is highly import-dependent. In these contexts, the decentralised nature of biological feedstock compared to petroleum and mined minerals can be a huge advantage.
What’s “sustainable”?
Culture also shapes what consumers believe makes a biomaterial sustainable in the first place.
In Germany, consumers looking for sustainable packaging options tend to prioritise reusability first and foremost, regardless of what the materials used are. This means consumers there put an emphasis on materials that are highly durable. After reusability, German consumers rank recyclability and then degradability as their second and third priorities when it comes to assessing sustainable options.
In France, preferences are slightly different: consumers looking for sustainable options rank recyclability as the top attribute, followed by reusability and degradability.
Cultural differences like this can inform R&D and product marketing for biomaterials producers. Fully recyclable biobased options are likely to do well in France while consumers might have a harder time accepting a biomaterial that can degrade in natural environments but cannot easily be recovered and re-used as a new product.
Labels that convince
Research shows that consumers tend to look for a single attribute when making sustainable choices. This varies between individuals and also between cultures: in Germany, it tends to be reusability. In France, it is recyclability.
The belief that a single property always makes a material greener can be detrimental for the biomaterials industry. In reality, it’s often hard to make generalised claims about what makes materials more sustainable: feedstock sourcing, applications, market alternatives, and many other variables matter.
These nuanced elements of sustainability can make it harder for biomaterials producers to succinctly communicate why their products are better than their competitors.
The only accurate way to judge product sustainability is to look for a life-cycle assessment – this is a careful analysis of a product’s impacts at every stage of its existence: its manufacturing, processing, use, and end-of-life.
This is where regulation comes in. The EU’s Ecolabel system is one of the most sophisticated product labelling schemes for sustainable goods. Based on life cycle assessments, it communicates quickly to consumers which are the best-performing sustainable products on the market today.
The EU Ecolabel is only allowed on products that perform within the best 10-20 percent of products available on the European market in terms of environmental performance. Here, ‘performance’ means impacts on health, safety, social and ethical aspects through the entire product life cycle. It also assesses durability, reusability, recyclability and recycled content.
The nuances of what makes a material sustainable can often be unclear. Well-regulated labelling schemes are one of the best ways of boosting consumer awareness of and confidence in the materials they are buying. According to Euromonitor, 28% of consumers identify unclear labelling as their main barrier to sustainable purchases.
Room for growth
On the whole, the biomaterials industry has much to celebrate. There is a long-term trend among consumers demanding more sustainable choices. Awareness around the damage caused by petrochemicals grows each year, particularly among younger generations.
However, cost and quality remain the most important factors in purchases. Over the last couple of years, cost has only become more important as consumers grapple with inflation.
Despite this, demand for sustainable materials has immense potential for growth. Educating the consumer can go a long way here.. Information on what precisely a particular product or material does better than potentially cheaper competitors is crucial to maximising sales. Understanding cultural contexts and adapting marketing narratives is also key.
There is huge room for regulatory intervention here. Robust sustainability labelling is one of the most effective ways to communicate with consumers and instil trust that the products they buy are contributing towards a healthier planet.
