Let’s pour clean water into the glass

Guest writer:
Ferenc Sági
research director
NRC

Insufficient information and high expectations

People have insufficient information about this topic. They are aware of the fact that there are environmental problems, but in spite of the wide media coverage few Hungarians, only 40% actually now what carbon footprint, ecological footprint or sustainability exactly mean. Still, 82% say it is important for companies to operate sustainably, and 66% claim that this is a basic requirement.

It is also very difficult to point at a group of consumers and say that they live sustainably. For instance Hungarians with a lower income buy second-hand clothes more often than those who earn more. If we asked thrift shop visitors whether they buy second-hand clothes because of sustainability reasons, they would be more likely to say yes than those customers who earn more (and are simply hunting for special fashion items that aren’t available elsewhere in Hungary). NRC’s suspicion is that low-income consumers simply buy second-hand clothes because they are cheaper.

Sustainability and food products

Hungarians basically connect the food industry and sustainability with packaging, saying the less plastic the better. At the same time what they want from packaging is first and foremost preserving the quality of food and easy usage – if it is also sustainable, it is just something extra. When we showed sustainability logos on food products to the participants of the survey, none of these logos had a minimum 10% awareness rate, not even the widely used “Fair trade”, “FSC” or “UTZ”. This shows that companies aren’t communicating their sustainability efforts and achievements well.

Concept problems

To make things worse, besides people not being familiar with the different sustainability related logos, they don’t understand the concept behind them either. We asked them whether certain food sustainability concepts are primarily sustainability or health related, and many of them couldn’t really decide. For instance Hungarians don’t know if a product label says the ingredients come from ecological farming, whether this message targets their health or the company wants them to contribute to saving the planet.

Whose responsibility is it?

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2022.12-01.