Plastic packaging material value conservation and evident of the consumers' acceptance

Virgin plastic pellets are widely used as raw materials in flexible plastic packaging which generate abundant postconsumer plastic waste. The widespread use of recycled plastic pellets as raw materials will reduce plastic waste generation significantly. However, substitution of virgin materials need high quality of recycled plastic pellets which produced from good quality of plastic waste. Design for material value conservation in this case study was a trial implementation of design principles of plastic bag in order to minimize its value degradation of plastic waste, and therefore increase its acceptance by plastic recycling industries. A Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with Lisrel 8.8 software used as tool of analysis in evaluating consumer acceptance of the two types of design paradigm, current design and material value conservation based design. The results indicated that consumers accepted both type of packaging. With final standard factor loading, the proposed design indicated slightly better correlation coefficients: 0.46 for Ease of Information Delivery and 0.74 for Informational Content variables, better than current design with 0.44 and 0.73 coefficients. Widespread implementation of design for material value conservation will save virgin plastic consumption for plastic packaging production, reduce plastic waste generation as well as support material resource conservation in a better condition of environment. The social and economic benefit will also be obtained as multiplier effect of material value conservation.