- New figures show that 90% of people say they care about ‘being green’
- Customers are more likely to listen to their own children on environmental issues than celebrities and politicians
- Women are more concerned about the environment than Men with recycling, energy efficiency and healthy food being top of their priority list
- 92% of those asked admitted to throwing away food
- Asda working closely with University of Leeds to help people tackle food waste
New figures show that the nation, despite a difficult economy, still wants to do its bit when it comes to being green with nine out of ten people saying they care about being green.
The Green Britain Index, a study conducted by Asda, asked 20,000 people on its ‘everyday experts’ panel what’s important to them when ‘being green’. It is the biggest consumer panel of its kind in Britain and asked the everyday experts everything from whether local sourcing was important to what packaging they’d like to see on the products going into their basket.
The results provide an interesting insight into how green the nation is, showing that women are more concerned about the environment than men with recycling, energy efficiency and healthy/organic food being their top priorities.
Almost three quarters (72%) of the panel said the green aspect of a product influences what they buy, with customers considering a number of green credentials when carrying out their weekly shop - locally sourced produce; organic; free range; health credentials; and Red Tractor certification making up the top five. Local sourcing tops the shopping list when it comes to choosing what goes in their basket – with fruit & veg, meat and dairy whether a product is local sourced or not is over 50% of the buying decision.
Asda’s Sustainable Business Senior Director, Chris Brown, said: “Being green is as important to us as it is to our customers, and they trust us to do the right thing by them and the environment. We launched the Everyday Experts panel to tap into our most valuable resource, our customers and the results tell us exactly where we should be focussing when it comes to sustainability.”
Customers also revealed they prefer to listen to their children on topics such as recycling, food waste or energy efficiency, rather than politicians and celebrities, however, although 81% said they’re happy to talk about issues such as recycling, food waste and saving energy, only 11% of admit to doing this regularly.
And although four out of five admit to throwing away food, it’s encouraging that 41% say this happens rarely, 39% say it happens occasionally and only nine per cent throw away food waste daily.
Asda and the University of Leeds are using the information to figure out the best ways to help customers cut down food waste.
The work has shown that talking to customers through printed media such as the Asda magazine is much more likely to change attitudes than social media. The Green Britain Index, along with the University of Leeds, has fed into Asda’s in store Love Food Hate Waste campaign that will help their customers to get the best out of their food this summer.