Promoting reuse behaviour: Challenges and strategies for repeat purchase, low-involvement products

Reusable products offer reduced environmental impact compared to recycling, but producers mostly focus on strategies such as light-weighting, recyclability and eco-labelling. A reasonable number of innovative reusable products and business models exist for repeat purchase, low-involvement products, but they are largely restricted to niche health-food stores. Therefore, this research primarily attempts to understand consumer attitudes and behaviour towards reuse of household care products (e.g. air fresheners, domestic cleaning products). Focus groups with UK consumers are utilised to examine reusable/refillable spray products and the data are triangulated with global archival data on various refill business models, reusable products and recycling initiatives. The study offers useful guidelines for both producers and policy makers to encourage reusable products. First, we recommend that eco-innovations have a familiar design congruent with well-known brands, to reduce uncertainties for consumers. Second, if the innovation has an unfamiliar design, to mitigate, producers should offer new functional benefits. Third, and most important, producers must place greater emphasis on aesthetic aspects that could evoke product attachment, thus encouraging reuse. Fourth, if reusable products are to become mainstream, ‘well-known brands’ have to promote the transition from one-off sales to a service model built on durable products. Finally, a successful outcome is dependent on government interventions in designing new life cycle policy instruments, in particular de-marketing the current recycling norm and emphasising reusing over recycling

Bread packaging: features and functions

Bread shelf-life can be extended by means of various packaging solutions. Traditionally, packaging materials had to be as inert as possible (“passive” packaging), and bread was protected by the main causes of spoilage, such as oxygen and molds, mostly by films made of synthetic polymers with low gas permeability, also coupled with the modification of headspace atmosphere. More recently, a new concept was developed to allow packaging to interact with food, after a provisional safety evaluation. “Active” and “intelligent” packaging, therefore, are made of functional materials deliberately interacting with bread for extending or monitoring its shelf-life, respectively. Nanopackaging systems are also under study and, to accomplish environmental requirements, biodegradable and edible films have been set up, all reviewed in this Chapter. Adequate bread packaging, coupled with interventions on formulation, can increase bread shelf-life up to 60 days, but can such a product really substitute “our daily bread”