I’ve been looking over an environmental study sent to us by our friends at allrecipes.com, the social networking website devoted to all things food.
The site regularly polls visitors, and the environmental survey, conducted in honor of Earth Day on April 22, is interesting because it connects the dots between certain consumer habits.
For example, 54% said they bring their own shopping bags to the store; 63% reuse grocery bags and nearly 55% recycle grocery bags (Oddly, nearly 8% said they do not use any bags. Must be Costco shoppers?).
The poll also asks, What environmentally-friendly routines does your family follow at home? More than 80% recycle, and just about as many reuse containers/plastic tubs.
So, attitudes start at home and are brought to the store. It’s too bad retailers couldn’t develop a way to survey their own customers on issues like this. It would be great to get direct feedback on what a particular store is doing right, what products shoppers are looking for, and what management can do to better serve them.
In the meantime, they’ll have to keep tallying up register receipts to see what’s selling; or checking inventories to see how fast they’re using plastic bags compared to the year before.
Here are some more stats that I think are pretty universal these days and apply to just about every store out there:
-- 64% said they purchased organic fruits and vegetables
-- 58% said they were buying more environmentally friendly household cleaners
-- Nearly 60% said they were willing to pay a little or a lot more for these products
-- Environmentally friendly meat, eggs and produce were the top categories in which consumers “sometimes” made purchases.
(photo courtesy of A Girl And Her Camera/Jenny//Flickr)