The ability to produce sustainable packaging and products has fast become the practice that customers value the most in the brands they shop. This is according to the latest insight report from the consumer trends tracker, Deloitte.
Even amid a soaring cost-of-living crisis customers have remained resolute in their discernment. Today, one in four customers (24%) admit to paying more for a ‘sustainable product’, putting a brand’s sustainability practice above most other factors.
In fact, and as detailed in Deloitte’s newest report, The Sustainable Consumer 2023, one in three consumers (30%) have actively stopped purchasing certain brands altogether because of ethical or sustainability-related concerns.
Consumer activism?
Most interesting is the way in which shopping habits – undeniably influenced yet not curtailed by financial pressures – have begun to influence and inform lifestyle choices, which includes placing a greater onus on purchasing items for their durability and repairability rather than their recyclability or biodegradability. Researchers have found that last year, 55% of customers opted to repair a damaged or broken item over buying a replacement.
Meanwhile, 46% of shoppers bought second-hand items and 42% chose to pay more for longer-lasting products in the first place.
These, pointedly, are lifestyle choices. And increasingly they are being adopted while a public scepticism over the efficiency of recycling grows. These results alone point towards a growing consideration among customers for what has been labelled ‘circularity.’ A growing consciousness of ‘waste’ and the global pollution crises – whether in plastics, textiles, or electronics – has led to an increase in shoppers now making ‘more conscious efforts’ when a products reaches its end-of-life.
At the same time, one in three shoppers are now buying more second-hand products than they did a year ago, while 39% are reselling more of their possessions now compared to in 2022. Is this just a sign of the times? Are financial worries forcing the customers’ hand to choose options that so happen to be more sustainable? As those financial pressures do ease (accommodating an ‘if’ and ‘when’ in there, too of course) the persistence of new customer habits will remain to be seen.
Because circularity isn’t coming easy. With ReLondon’s annual Repair Week now at large across the UK’s capital, the social impact group and NGO is keen to leverage the current lean into more sustainable behaviours to encourage a budding circular economy within London. Yet the organisation remains acutely aware of the major hurdles still to be overcome.
London Circular – building local economies
It’s according to Censuswide research commissioned by ReLondon itself that last year, Londoners discarded an estimated £1.9 billion worth of repairable items. That’s an average of £269.42 per adult in London. Meanwhile, they also spent – on average – £459.80 replacing damaged or broken items that could have been repaired. ReLondon highlights that, when extrapolated across all Londoners, this amounts to £3 billion spent replacing repairable stuff.
However, and as its London Repair Week continues to spread the message across the capital all this week, with workshops and educational sessions for the public to attend, the desire to change is ‘palpable.’
Around 73% of the survey’s London respondents have expressed a willingness to repair items themselves ‘if the process is straightforward,’ while 71% are keen to acquire repair skills to save money. However, accessibility to the repair economy remains a hurdle: 65% of Londoners lament the scarcity of nearby repair shops, while 63% feel there’s not enough support for repair business to keep them afloat on the high street.
Ali Moore, head of campaigns for London Recycles (ReLondon), said: “The fact that so many people are getting involved in Repair Week again shows what an appetite for repair there is in the city.
“We really hope that Repair Week inspires people to mend their own things but also leads to more support for organisations offering repair services to their community – for instance by landlords offering access to vacant shop premises, or financial institutions providing more business support, or simply through local people setting up or making better use of their community repair hubs or cafes.
“There’s a clear role for repair as people continue to struggle with cost -of-living pressures, because it can save us money by keeping our stuff in use for longer.”
Repair in our global business models
The repair and refurbish sector also has real economic viability. Déjá Vu – founded in Beijing in 2017 – is a second-hand trading platform which specialises in selling refurbished books, clothing, and small electronics. It’s a market that’s projected to surge from $42 million in 2015 to something close to $417.9 billion by 2025. That’s a figure larger than the current scale of the global brand and licensing industry combined ($340bn at last estimation), by next year.
Since its launch, Déjá Vu has gained a following of 12 million users who have resold some 36 million used books and 550,000 used clothing items through its platform. And Déjá Vu is just one name among many now perpetuating a working repair, refurb, and resale model.
It’s unquestionable that the desire for change among today’s shoppers is real. Perhaps the next step is in making the repair and refurb model as accessible to brands and businesses as much as customers?
