Green dot, Tidyman, Möbius strip, Triman... the French get lost in the sorting office. 70% say they cannot find or understand the sorting instructions on packaging, according to the OpinionWay study for Alkemics Les Français et la réduction des emballages.
And to the question Have you ever seen these logos on the packaging and do you understand them, not many French people answered yes.
Of the 16 logos tested, only two seem to be well understood: the Tidyman logo and the crossed-out trash can. Respectively 55% and 54% of the French say they know what they correspond to.
Five other logos are well identified, but are still poorly understood: the info-sort instructions (49% of respondents say they know what it means), the green dot (35%), the Möbius circle (30%), the NF Environnement logo (32%) and the EU Ecolabel logo (25%).
Six are misidentified and therefore misunderstood: the Recyclable Steel logo (only 27% of people know what it means), the Tetra Pak logo (26%), the Triman logo (only 16%), the PEFC/FSC logos (18%), the Recyclable Glass logo (17%) and the Möbius ribbon with percentage (13%).
Finally, three logos are very poorly identified by respondents: the triangles with a number (9%), the biodegradable logo (7%) and the compostable logo (7%). More than 75% of the respondents do not know how to identify them.
"Another teaching, when they don't know the meaning of a logo, the French infer, sometimes wrongly, that the packaging they want to throw away is recyclable" adds OpinionWay.
The most convincing example is the green dot, which is very common. "This logo in no way indicates that the packaging is recyclable, as 72% of French people think, but rather that the company adheres to a system of contributions to waste recycling."
