More needs to be done to recycle household waste, say consumers

Cologne, March 9th (Anuga Trade Fair):

Consumer survey results published today at Anuga Trade Fair show that 86% of consumers say they recycle their glass and over 80% think not enough attention is paid to household waste. The survey of 6200 consumers in 12 European Countries was conducted for FEVE the European Federation for container glass.

The survey found that 57% of consumers pay attention to the environmental friendliness of packaging material during their grocery shopping.

77% of consumers also indicated that more could be done by the media on the concept of recycling. 85% consider a packaging material to claim recycling needs to be 50% or more recycled or reprocessed, with 28% believing it should be 100% recycled to its original form.

Today’s results are the inspiration behind the European container glass industry’s new public awareness campaign “Friends of Glass” (www.friendsofglass.com), a collective initiative to increase glass recycling rates in Europe.

“In 2007, our industry produced 22 million tonnes of glass. 62% of that was recycled. Glass is 100% recyclable and our industry is setting itself the sustainability challenge to facilitate the recycling of the remaining 38% of glass that is put on the market but not yet recycled,” said Dominique Tombeur, President of FEVE. “Today’s discussion is how to continue to tackle the sustainability challenge. And increasing recycling is a key area. We are launching a campaign to make consumers the hero of this challenge as they are at the heart of the movement to make that happen.”

Today’s survey results are a part release - the full survey results will be made public later this month.

Join us at www.friendsofglass.com

Click here for access to graphics and survey results:

http://www.feve.org/PackagingForum.html

BACKGROUND & FACT SHEET

1.WHO IS FEVE?
FEVE is the federation of European manufacturers of glass packaging containers and machine-made glass tableware. The member companies manufacture glass bottles, jars and/or tableware items such as drinking glasses in the European Union, Switzerland and Turkey. They account for the great majority of glass packaging containers produced within this region.

2. FEVE’S ROLE
The federation represents the glass container industry at the international, and especially European level and serves as a forum for examining common questions. FEVE maintains a dialogue with the European institutions and agencies on environmental, trade and other important issues. The federation promotes glass packaging and glass recycling, complementing the activities of the glass industry at national level. For more, please visit www.feve.org.

3. SURVEY METHODOLOGY
What? Quantitative survey conducted by InSites (an independent research company), by means of an on-line survey. The objective was to gain insight over consumer’s knowledge, attitude and behavior towards glass containers as packaging, in relation to other packaging materials. Packaging materials compared were glass, plastics, beverage carton, metal beverage cans, and metal & tin conserves.

Who? The survey was conducted with 6,200 consumers spread over 12 European countries (more than 500 respondents per country): UK,Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Czech Republic, Greece, Turkey.

Correspondent’s age varied from 18 to 54 years old.

When? Data-collection took place between September 4-14, 2008.

4. DETAILED SURVEY RESULTS
Today’s survey results are a part release - the full survey results will be made available to journalists later this month including country by country results. For more information, please contact:

Michael Delle Selve - Communications and Operations Manager
FEVE - the European Container Glass Federation
Tel +32 2 536 00 80 - Direct: +32 2 536 00 82
e-mail: m.delleselve@feve.org