Synovate interviewed approximately 22,000 people across 28 countries as part of its ongoing Global Trends study: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, UAE, UK and USA. Respondents were asked about their recycling habits, purchase of ecological products and purchase of organic foods, as well as their general beliefs on life, in order to also determine if there was a correlation between those beliefs and green behaviour.
Women around the world ranked higher than men across all green behaviour categories while people aged 56-65 years old ranked highest in recycling and buying ecological products, and those 46-55 years old led in organic food purchase. Those in the 16-25 age group scored lowest across all categories.
"We asked respondents to show agreement and disagreement with several topics related with basic needs and attitudes that anyone in the world would have in different life situations. We used these results to conduct a global segmentation framed under our Censydiam research model," said Peter Huijboom, Synovate CEO for Geographies. "Those who showed the highest levels of agreement with statements related to concern about the future or the importance of family were actually the ones purchasing fewer ecological and organic products, and recycling less. This suggests green behaviour in many people may be borne from other convictions that aren't related to the health and well-being of family and the planet.
"For example, our segmentation demonstrates that those who recycle more are also more group-oriented while people who consume more organic products are more likely to be more individualistic," Huijboom said.
Recycling and buying green
Recycling waste at home was more popular with women, with 54% overall saying they had done this in the past week compared to 48% of men.
Respondents in Canada (88%), South Korea (86%) and Spain (84%) were most likely to have recycled waste at home during the past week, closely followed by those in Belgium (82%), Italy and the UK (81% each). Those least likely to have recycled at home were those in Indonesia, Russia and Egypt, where less than 15% of respondents said they had recycled in the last week.
"For the past few years city governments around Canada have made a huge push on recycling," said Rob Myers, managing director for Synovate in Canada. "Homes in all major cities are given a blue bin for recycling material, a green bin for biodegradable items such as food, and a black bin for items that don't fit into the first two categories. Effectively the job of sorting garbage has moved from the dump to the household and Canadians have been trained to recycle."
"Technologies for recycling waste were well developed and promoted by the government in the former USSR," said Elena Koneva, managing director for Synovate in Russia. "Unfortunately most of that has been lost over the past ten years and, at the same time, consumption has grown strongly. Now we see some efforts to turn Russians back towards green living, but it's mostly from commercial companies that promote multi-use bags, try to reduce use of plastic bags, etc. Of course, that's not enough - we need to do a lot more to change people's mentality to cultivate more green habits in Russia. It's extremely important that every single individual understand the importance of it so that we' don't turn the earth into a wasteland."
When it came to purchasing ecological products, Denmark and Sweden led the pack (59% and 52% respectively), while Serbia (8%) and China (9%) were lowest.
"Green habits and consumption is generally high on the priority list of Scandinavian consumers," said Ulf Andersen, CEO for Synovate Scandinavia. "There is relatively easy access to a range of eco-friendly products in most major grocery stores, and Scandinavian consumers are increasingly conscious of how products are produced and what additives might be in them. The Scandinavian "outdoor" way of life and focus on local produce also increases consumers' desire for eco-friendly products and behavior."
Denmark again led all the countries in organic food purchase (69%), while the next highest respondents were UAE, Mexico and Germany. Lowest purchasers of organic food were Indonesia (3%) and Japan (10%).
Robby Sutsayo, managing director for Synovate in Indonesia, said: "Indonesians are dealing with other huge issues right now, unfortunately. The impact of natural disasters is diverting people's attention from helping to improve ecology and the environment. Another disaster that has their attention is corruption by tax officials. Once these priorities are dealt with, there will likely be a little more attention to going green."
"A focus on organic food is going to take a long time to catch on among Japanese," said Rika Fujiki, managing director for Synovate Japan. "In 2008, there were some food security cases here, such as scams disguising food origin and food poisoning by imported processed food. People's understanding and attention to food security grew stronger, and organic products and natural food were in the spotlight. However, organic products are still expensive in Japan and accessibility is low. Price and convenience beat anxiety. In addition, the economy is not much improved after a prolonged recession. People would like to be green, but not with the extra cost."
Interestingly, the three green habits studied did not directly correlate with each other - meaning, if someone did one habit, it did not automatically mean they did the others. As shown in the chart below, mainly very different countries led for each green behaviour.
"Correlation of green habits likely has a lot to do with availability," said Huijboom. "For example, Germany is quite good at buying organic but could do better at recycling. That's because they don't have a good system for collecting recyclables, which helps explain this. So the results don't necessarily mean that people don't want to be greener - it may just be that they can't. On the opposite end, the UK buys few ecological products, but is very good at recycling. Governments could certainly help increase their population's ability to engage in more green behaviour, and in a multi-faceted way, if they made all of this more available to their citizens.
"We also found that green attitudes and habits are not necessarily linked to macro trends in particular countries. Instead, they depend more on the micro factors within them," said Huijboom. "For instance, there are examples in the media of communities that are skeptical about global warming and its scientific predictions, but they still embrace clean energy habits based on economic, patriotic or spiritual reasons."
Continued Huijboom: "There are also no clear continent patterns. For example, whilst Germany ranks second in organic food consumption, their Dutch neighbors are in the mid-lower portion of all three green categories despite how geographically close the two countries are."
In its analysis, Synovate also mapped all the answers to determine which countries' respondents are doing all they can to be green. Countries were divided into the following four categories: 1) consumers that do all they can, 2) consumers that do the most they can, 3) consumers that do not do the most they can and 4) consumers that don't do anything. While Europe, Canada and USA appeared to have the most active green behaviour overall, and India, Serbia and Indonesia appeared the most inactive, Synovate said that this isn't necessarily the case.
"Since the green habits we measured aren't showing much of a correlation with each other, we can't assume which markets are the greenest overall," said Huijboom. "Even the countries showing up on the lower end of the scale may be doing other activities that are green-friendly or that they perceive to be. Brands need to consider and understand what being actively green really means at the local level in order for them to be relevant in their communications on this issue."
