13 Plastic Packaging in People’s Lives (PPiPL) was one of ten university-led research projects funded as part of UK Research and Innovation’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, connected to the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge. Plastic packaging occupies a key role in society’s global food production and consumption systems. It maintains food preservation and hygiene standards, provides value and convenience to consumers, and supports increasingly complex food supply chains. But increasing production, coupled with plastic’s longevity, pose significant problems to human health and wellbeing, and to the natural environment. Despite ambitious targets and ongoing public debate about the environmental and societal impacts of plastic, research suggests consumption practices remain largely at odds with consumers’ views. This ‘attitude-behaviour gap’ reveals that we do not fully understand the factors that shape, influence, and contextualise why people believe that we should reduce plastic use, but continue to use it? PPiPL focused on how plastic food packaging is embedded in consumers’ day-to-day lives. Taking a holistic approach, and using food plastic packaging as an exemplar, the project examined the whole packaging supply chain (production, consumption, post-consumption, waste disposal technologies and processes) to acquire insights that will enable policymakers and industry professionals to bridge the consumer attitude-behaviour gap in plastic packaging reduction. Addressing such global challenges calls for an interdisciplinary approach to identifying solutions. PPiPL brought academics from a range of disciplines together with 11 industrial partners to translate insights into practical solutions. This collaborative approach allowed the team to explore the key challenges and potential solutions across the plastic packaging value chain from different perspectives. PPiPL’s collective efforts have supported the ambitions of the UK Plastics Pact targets for 2025 by developing insights and action-orientated recommendations regarding communication, household practices, supply chain and waste management practices, and perceptions of the consumer attitude-behaviour gap. Pentland members: Professor Maria Piacentini; Dr Alison Stowell; Dr Charlotte Hadley; Dr Clare Mumford; Dr Savita Verma; Marta Ferri; Dr Lenka Brunclikova, Professor Linda Hendry; Dr Matteo Saltalippi Key insights and recommendations are on the PPiPL resource webpage. Plastic Packaging in People’s Lives Find out more about the PPiPL project here: https://youtu.be/U6OG9J8YK4M https://pod.co/transforming-tomorrow/ is-plastic-fantastic Listen... A Pentland Centre Research & Impact Digest, 2025
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