How To Encourage Your Customers To Recycle Packaging
Your business might take sustainability seriously by implementing eco-friendly packaging, but are your customers recycling it? While converting your packaging to eco-friendly materials is the first step in reducing your business’s carbon footprint, your customers should then actually recycle it.
Encouraging your customers to recycle your packaging is essential for reducing waste. We can’t guarantee that everyone will recycle these materials, but you can try motivating them with the following tips.
Print a Reminder on the Package
After the excitement of opening a product, a customer might not even realize that a material is recyclable. Printing a message on the package helps remind customers that they can throw the box in the recycling bin. For example, when you receive a HelloFresh order, the ice pack has “recycle me” on the outside to remind customers not to throw it in the trash.
Market Your Products As Sustainable
Are you using eco-friendly materials yet not using sustainability as a marketing tool for your brand? You can’t expect customers to know they can recycle your packaging if they don’t realize your business focuses on sustainability. Advertise on your website the efforts your business is taking to encourage recycling practices so that customers know about them before buying a product. Adding this to your website could also be a selling point for several people.
Develop Frustration-Free Packaging
The easier you make it to recycle a package, the more likely a customer will actually do so. This is essentially what developing frustration-free packaging is. For example, you might use an eco-friendly material for the package without realizing that the adhesive on your labels can contaminate the paper recycling process. This can be frustrating to recycle for customers. Only use recyclable materials and minimize excess filler materials within the packaging to simplify recycling.
Make Suggestions for Reusing Packaging
Your customers don’t necessarily need to recycle your product packaging. They can always reuse it too! Make suggestions directly on your packaging on how customers can reuse a material. For instance, if you sell something in a glass jar, you might suggest a customer use the package for organizing a pantry, holding office supplies, turning it into a propagation station for plants, etc.
Encouraging your customers to recycle packaging is an important step in converting to eco-friendly materials. Motivation is key when you want to remind customers of this. Use the suggestions above to ensure your customers recycle your product packaging after making a purchase.
Originally Published on https://www.breakfastleadership.com/
