Millennials versus Boomers
New research proves consumers are drawn to products made from recycled material, but will they pay more for them? We ask Deceuninck’s MD Rob McGlennon to crunch the numbers.
Deceuninck’s timely and valuable survey into the buying habits of homeowners has revealed some fascinating data, such as: more than two-thirds of UK homeowners (68%) would choose windows and doors with a higher recycled content over and above products which don’t, or which do so at a lower level.
If ever there was an encouragement to pursue a business strategy with sustainability at its heart, then this is it.
The survey by leading pollster YouGov, and commissioned by Deceuninck, was conducted following the COP26 summit in Glasgow. Since then, climate change, sustainability and energy efficiency have remained at the top of the news agenda.
“Our lives are measured in kilograms of carbon, the amount of household waste we can recycle each week, and by how much we can reduce our impact on the environment,” Deceuninck’s MD, Rob McGlennon, says. “And this mindset is feeding into our buying decisions, according to the results of our latest survey.
“However, to think that all consumers share the same ideals, ignores some crucial details that could affect the way you approach the market.”
The headline figures, even with little context, are encouraging to any business that has decided to push sustainability up the marketing agenda. With context, the figures start to paint a more interesting figure.
The example above – 68% of homeowners would choose windows and doors with a higher recycled content – is more significant when you consider that only 2% of survey respondents would see sustainability as a product-buying turn-off. In other words, building sustainability into your products and marketing messages is not going to be damaging to your bottom line.
“The same goes for the 63% of homeowners who said that they would be more likely to purchase home improvements, which they saw as being more sustainable,” Rob says. “Less than 1% said they would choose not to.”
When it came to putting hands in pockets, the sentiment from homeowners changes: the study found that 38% would be prepared to pay more for home improvement products that had higher recycled content and reduced impact on the environment; 39% said they wouldn’t.
However, when you took the ages of the survey respondents into consideration, a different picture emerges. Among the under 45 age group, 40% would pay more for products with a higher recycled content, as opposed to 37% who said they wouldn’t.
Whereas, in the 45+ category, the recycled content is not necessarily a wallet-opener, with 35% saying they would pay more, and 40% saying they wouldn’t.
“These are really interesting results,” Rob says. “There was always the assumption that the older generations – Gen Xs and the second wave of Boomers – had the money to make decisions based on more than a product’s basic function. However, this survey has blown that out of the water.
“The younger generations – Millennials and Gen Zs – are prepared to put their money where their mouths are, and pay more for something they know is going to be better for the environment. And these generations are only just starting out on their home-owning journey. So, if we are thinking about future sales, we need to get in with these consumers now.”
Deceuninck has invested more than €15million in one of the world’s most advanced PVC-U recycling and compounding facilities.
This gives it the capability to reprocess up to 45,000 tonnes of post-consumer and post-manufacturing PVC-U per year – the equivalent of preventing three million windows from going to landfill annually.
Use of recycled material also delivers a reduction in CO2 emissions of 90,000 tonnes compared to virgin feedstocks as well as a 90% energy saving.
Rob continued: “There are big environmental benefits here, which every fabricator and installer should take notice of.
“The co-extrusion technologies which we employ to bring product back into use isolate recycled content in areas away from the surface of the product and guarantee finish and performance – it’s a leading-edge process.
“That directly benefits the environment, which for us is reason enough to do it. There are, however, commercial benefits right through the window and door supply chain, for fabricators – and for installers.
“The fact that more under 45s are prepared to pay more for products with a higher recycled content than those who aren’t should be the wake-up call we need to focus our energies on producing sustainable products.