The correlation between sustainable plastic adoption and business sustainability in the food packaging sector

Abstract

Ireland is producing the most plastic waste per person in Europe (Statista Research Department, 2021). Approximately 40 % of all plastic produced in Ireland goes to the food packaging sector (EESC, 2020). In order to achieve goal 12 of the SDG’s, we must transition from a linear to circular economy. Research Questions Methodology Pilot 1 Findings Price/Value of SP Employee Awareness Effort Expectancy of SP Intention to use SP Actual SP Use Facilitating Conditions Economic Sustainability Employee- Social Sustainability in Plastics Environmental Sustainability in Plastics Performance Expectancy of SP Plastic Circularity Social influence Branding of SP The Correlation between Sustainable Plastic Adoption and Business Sustainability in the Food Packaging Sector Ms Alina Greene, Faculty of Business & Hospitality, Athlone Institute of Technology Dr. Aisling Keenan Gaylard Faculty of Business & Hospitality, Athlone Institute of Technology, Dr. Margaret Brennan Fournet, Materials Research Institute, Athlone Institute of Technology Pilot 1: A random sample of 12 employees from the hospitality, retail and food production and packaging manufacture industries. Mixed Method approach was used. Further Research Pilot 2: A sample of 50 employees from one company in the packaging manufacturing/ food production sector. An initial quantitative study will be completed with potential for follow up interviews. Results will be analysed using PLSSEM through SmartPLS. RO1. To investigate whether social and environmental influence is a factor for businesses when adopting sustainable plastics for food packaging RO2. To investigate the level to which businesses trust their performance and technical infrastructure for the development of sustainable food packaging RO3: To ascertain whether BioICEP effort expectancy is a factor for businesses when adopting sustainable plastic for food packaging RO4: To investigate the level to which businesses consider the price value of developing sustainable plastic 42 % Yes No Does your Business currently use sustainable plastic? 75 % Do you consider your workplace to be a sustainable 67% stated their workplace could do more in engaging employees in their CSR/sustainable developments This study uses a combination of elements from the UTAUT (Venkatesh et al., 2003), the TBL (Elkington, 1997) the 9R Framework (Rli, 2015) and the SET (Homans, 1961)