#DidYouKnow we’re developing an 100% sustainable plastic bottle with @Danone & Origin Materials: https://t.co/XAqHZhiwz0 #BeatPlasticPollution pic.twitter.com/DC1xRO49hA
— Nestlé (@Nestle) June 6, 2018
Plastic waste ending up in landfills and in the ocean has become a major concern for various groups around the world. Some are indirectly impacted by the issue, fighting to protect marine life. Others, such as residents of Indonesia, are directly impacted by plastic waste and have their rivers and beaches flooded by plastic bottles. As a result, many organizations are pushing for a ban on plastic straws and for an increase in the use of reusable water bottles. CPG companies are hit the hardest by plastic product criticisms as their products are typically for short-term use and regularly employ plastic packaging that may end up in oceans and rivers. As a result, all CPG companies have adopted some sort of sustainability programs to show to their customers that the companies share the same values as the consumers.
Both Danone and Nestle have ambitious sustainability goals for the year 2030. One of these sustainability goals that both companies share is to eliminate the negative impact that their water bottles have on the environment. With the help of Origin Materials, Nestle and Danone are aiming to replace petroleum-based plastic water bottles with bio-based bottles, which are intended to be better for the environment. This is an especially important PR move for Nestle, whose water bottle division has been under harsh criticism over the California drought controversy.
This tweet announcing the initiative was posted last week and yet has less than 50 interactions, which is significantly less than the over ten thousand interactions that each of the mayochup tweets received at the end of April. Because the tweets were sent out by different accounts, I took a look to see if it might simply be that the @Nestle account had fewer followers than the @HeinzKetchup_US account. It turned out that @Nestle has around 221K followers while @HeinzKetchup_US has only 41.6K followers. Therefore, it seems weird that an account with less than 20% followers receives thousands of interactions more. Could it be that consumers are less interested in sustainability than they claim to be? After some research, I found that various studies have shown that information about sustainability initiatives by companies has a limited impact on consumer buying behavior. So, in your opinion, would you say that CPG companies investing in sustainability initiatives are wasting their money, are differentiating themselves or are simply trying to keep up with the curve?