European consumers are keen to see food and beverage manufacturers enhance the environmental credentials of their packaging, according to a new survey released this week.

Consumer survey results published at the Anuga Trade Fair show that 86% of consumers say they recycle their glass and over 80% think not enough attention is paid to household waste. The survey of 6200 consumers in 12 European Countries was conducted for FEVE – the European Federation for container glass.

The survey established that 57% of consumers pay attention to the environmental friendliness of packaging material during their grocery shopping.

77% of consumers also indicated that more could be done by the media on the concept of recycling. 85% consider a packaging material to claim recycling needs to be 50% or more recycled or reprocessed, with 28% believing it should be 100% recycled to its original form.

The results are the inspiration behind the European container glass industry’s new public awareness campaign “Friends of Glass” (www.friendsofglass.com), a collective initiative to increase glass recycling rates in Europe.

“In 2007, our industry produced 22 million tonnes of glass. 62% of that was recycled. Glass is 100% recyclable and our industry is setting itself the sustainability challenge to facilitate the recycling of the remaining 38% of glass that is put on the market but not yet recycled,” said Dominique Tombeur, President of FEVE. “Today’s discussion is how to continue to tackle the sustainability challenge. And increasing recycling is a key area. We are launching a campaign to make consumers the hero of this challenge as they are at the heart of the movement to make that happen.”

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