As Earth Day draws nigh, annual surveys, polls, and studies are emerging showing the latest research on the public’s attitude toward environmental issues. One press release about one such survey caught my attention. Perception Research Services (PRS) has regularly surveyed consumers about their attitudes toward sustainable packaging, and the sense one gets is that people generally want to do the right thing, but are thwarted by communication and trust issues. To wit:

Significantly more shoppers state they would like to choose environmentally friendly packaging compared to 2010 (36% vs 28%).

The movement is in a positive direction, but it still means that 64% of respondents would not like to choose environmentally friendly packaging (I haven’t been able to find the survey itself, so I don’t know what options were presented; that nearly two-thirds could also be largely ambivalent or blasé rather than actively opposed to green packaging). My suspicion is that overall cost trumps most other concerns. Still:

Over half (59%) of our sample state that seeing environmental claims on packaging positively impacts their behavior (to either buy more of the brands they usually do, or switch to others).

Here’s where things get interesting. Effective communication remains elusive:

Significantly more report there isn’t enough environmental information (26% vs 20%), that they are confused by all the different environmental claims (20% vs 12%), and that they don’t know which packages are best for the environment (22% vs 17%).

Couple this with

fewer shoppers feel that manufacturers’ motives are primarily honorable (57% vs 61%). Shoppers are becoming more skeptical of manufacturers behaviors and motives in this area.

The added wrinkle is that as more and more goods are purchased online, consumers have no idea what kind of packaging they’re going to get. There’s nothing wrong with skepticism, of course, but rejecting all claims outright makes as little sense as just accepting everything. But it’s obvious that manufacturers and packagers still have a lot of work to do to communicate the extent to which they put a good-faith effort into producing their packaging.