PPiPL: Plastic Packaging in People’s Lives

The Plastic Packaging in Peoples’ Lives project (PPiPL) focuses on how plastic food packaging is embedded in consumers’ day-to-day lives.

It aims to gather behavioural insights to enable policymakers and industry to bridge the gap between consumer attitudes to plastic packaging reduction and their behaviour.

Taking the food sector as an exemplar, our research will examine the whole packaging supply chain, from production through consumption through waste disposal.

Over the three-year project, our aim is to shift behaviours around plastic packaging by developing insights into consumer, business and waste management practices. We aim to tackle key pinch points inhibiting the drive towards cleaner, greener growth.

Our Goals

• To produce a comprehensive overview of socio-cultural, historical and industrial conditions, public preferences, post-consumer pathways and legal structures feeding the perceived legitimacy of plastic packaging in the UK.  
• To provide an in-depth understanding of plastic packaging consumption and disposal within UK households.
• To explore how the public interprets information about packaging and its social and economic impacts. To identify sources of public concern that prevent adoption or purchase of smart & sustainable alternatives.  
• To understand the response of supply chains to customer attitudes and behaviours related to plastic packaging.  
• To enter discourse with supply chain actors around the attitude-behaviour gap, as a mechanism for collaboration to drive change.
• To explore plastic waste management and disposal practices.  
• To explore how our findings can help to create real-world impact on consumer and business behaviours.