Comparison study of the reducing, reusing and recycling knowledge and habits of conventional and organic food consumers

Abstract: The purpose of the present Master Thesis is to study, analyse and compare the attitude and knowledge of conventional or non-organic food consumers and organic food consumers in the packaging food disposal. Sweden and Spain are the countries chosen to develop this project. The research therefore will try to answer the following questions: • How much do conventional and organic food consumers know about the packaging food disposal? • How do they behave when disposing it? A comparison between both types of consumers and countries will be done. The objective is also to try to find the causes that make some consumers not recycle or not recycle more and try to find a solution to increase their recycling habits. By using literature, articles and information on the Internet, the Theory chapter has been developed. In the theory chapter, a number of sections describe information related to Packaging, Sustainability, Organic Farming in Sweden and Spain, Waste background and finally the Waste Management System used by each of the countries. This information has helped me in the analysis of the results obtained and in the development of the conclusion. To answer the research questions, qualitative and quantitative data has been gathered by different methods. Interviews done in three different class supermarkets have been used to get quantitative information. The focus groups have been used to gather the qualitative information, which have helped me in the understanding of the knowledge and attitude of both consumers. The gathered information has also helped me with the development of the possible alternative solution. Each of the countries are analysed in the same way. Firstly, and introduction of the conventional and organic market is done. Then conventional consumers are analysed by answering the three research questions. After having analysed conventional consumers, the organic consumer research questions are analysed. A comparison between both consumers is then developed. A comparison between Sweden and Spain is finally done. The conclusions of this Thesis are different in each of the countries. In Sweden, although conventional consumers have a small higher knowledge and small better habits than organic consumers, there is not a significance difference of what conventional consumers know and do compare to what organic consumers know and do. In Spain, organic consumer do it worse in the Recycling activities due to the untruthful of the little information spread by governments, while they do it better in the Reducing and Reusing rates due to the more awareness with environmental problems. Finally, when comparing Sweden with Spain, Sweden has a higher knowledge and attitude than Spain. Therefore, it would be interesting to improve the Spanish knowledge and attitude by copying the good systems of the Swedish model and implementing them in Spain.