2025年包装的可持续性：全球消费者的内心世界

The years since 2020have been a time of upheavalfor consumers and companies alike, and packagingplayers are no exception. A global pandemic shiftedconsumption patterns,1many countries wentthrough a period of high inflation,2and geopoliticaluncertainty continues to reshape trade flows3—sometimes profoundly. How have these factorsaffected the choices consumers make and especiallytheir attitudes and sentiments toward packaging?To answer this question, in the first quarter of 2025we launched another round of our comprehensivesurvey exploring consumers’ attitudes towardpackaging. We have been conducting this researchglobally with tens of thousands of consumers since2020, and this survey round encompasses more than11,000 respondents from 11 countries4that togetherrepresent four continents, 66 percent of global GDP,and 50 percent of the world’s population.5This survey addresses consumer preferences acrossproduct categories, packaging substrates, andsales channels, and it offers granular insights bydemographic group (such as income level, geography,gender, and age) within each country, though analysisin this article is mostly presented at the country level.In addition, this survey round included a number ofquestions that were also used in 2020 and 2023,which allows us to look at trends over time.6Five key findings emerge: Two relate to the factorsmost important to consumers overall when makingpurchases and when considering packaging, andthe remaining three provide detail on consumerattitudes toward sustainability. First—andconsistent with previous survey rounds—priceand quality remain the most important productcharacteristics that influence consumers’purchasing decisions, with price even moreimportant when compared with previous years.Environmental concerns rank significantly loweracross product categories, though some Europeancountries (including France and Italy) place higherimportance on environmental impact.1“State of the Consumer 2025: When disruption becomes permanent,” McKinsey, June 9, 2025.2“Inflation, consumer prices (annual %),” World Bank Group, 2024.3Cindy Levy, Shubham Singhal, and Zoe Fox, “Tariffs and global trade: The economic impact on business,” McKinsey, April 18, 2025.4Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.5McKinsey analysis using data from the World Bank, “Population, total,” World Bank Group, 2023.6“Sustainability in packaging: Inside the minds of global consumers,” McKinsey, December 16, 2020; “Sustainability in packaging 2023: Insidethe minds of global consumers,” McKinsey, August 15, 2023. Second, food safety and shelf life have remainedthe most important packaging characteristicsthat influence consumers’ purchasing decisions,and the importance of environmental impact hasonce again ranked at a much lower level. Notably,however, consumers globally do not care less aboutthe environment today than they did in the past; theabsolute proportion of the survey sample who deemit important has stayed fairly flat. Rather, consumershave started to care more about a number of otherfactors, including value for money.Third, recyclability is viewed as the most criticalsustainability trait globally, with limited consensuson the next most important factor, though allfacets of circularity ranked well. Fourth, our surveyindicates that consumers around the world arenot fully aligned in their views on which packagingmaterials are the most sustainable. Glass and paperrank high across all geographies, but importantdifferences exist between countries, such as forpolyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, which areviewed as sustainable in geographies with robustcollection systems such as deposit return schemes.Fifth, despite ranking environmental factorsrelatively lower than in prior surveys, the majorityof respondents claim to be willing to pay more forsustainable packaging.Overall, there is a significant—and fairlyconsistent—portion of global consumers forwhom environmental factors are very important,but consumers’ attitudes and understanding ofsustainable packaging are complex. While thereare important nuances by geography, two factorsare consistent across the countries surveyed. First,younger consumers (Gen Zers and millennials)and higher-income consumers generally reportedthe most willingness to pay more for sustainablepackaging. Second, consumers generally seepackaging producers and brand owners—ratherthan themselves, retailers, or regulators—asresponsible for driving sustainability in packaging.As such, packaging producers and brand owners2Sustainability in packaging 2025: Inside the minds of global consumers will need to carefully consider how to respond toevolving consumer demand. This will require a granularunderstanding of the sentiment and segmentationof the consumer landscape. This article concludeswith three critical questions that companies in thepackaging value chain need to answer to start buildingan actionable fact base on w