With plastic pollution dominating the headlines, the public are becoming more aware of the impact that their daily lives are having on the environment and seem to be making moves to decrease their negative impacts.
However, the public are not the only ones catching on and making waves in the eco-friendly space, there are a number of brands carrying out eco-friendly practices in the manufacturing of their products, such as New Balance, Matt & Nat and The White Company.
Online clothing retailer Clothes2Order recently commissioned a survey which revealed that 44% of UK consumers have in fact boycotted a brand based on its ethics or eco-policies, which suggests that the demand for eco-friendly products is growing. Two thirds of people surveyed said that they are more likely to buy from eco-friendly brands, and 50% also admitted to researching brands policies before making a purchase, however on 6.5% do this every time.
The survey looked into why more people are moving towards ethical shopping and eco-friendly living and the reason that came out on top was ‘I care about the environment’ – with people more aware than ever of the damage that has already been done to the environment, they seem to have a genuine want to do their part in helping to claw it back.
The data showed that there is definitely a divide when it comes to age in terms of who is most likely to shop from more ethical brands. For example, products that are produced ethically tend to have a higher price tag than those that are not, and 43.7% of people aged 16-24 said that they would likely pay more for ethical products, compared to 44.3% of people aged 55+ that said they wouldn’t want to splash more cash just because a product was considered eco-friendly.
Although it seems that consumers attitudes towards ethical shopping is changing and becoming more positive, there are still a number of people that are sceptical about brands labelling themselves as ‘eco-friendly’ or ‘ethical’, in fact 21% of people that took the survey believe that brands only adopt these eco-friendly practices for marketing purposes.
If you would like to know more about the UKs views on ethical shopping, then you can take a look at the rest of the survey results that have been compiled into an interesting visual here: https://www.clothes2order.com/pages/eco-friendly-survey/
