Encouraging Consumers to Recycle Is a Marketing Win for Brands. So Why Aren't More Doing It?

When it comes to what should be done with a used pizza box, Richard Venditti is about as informed a consumer as a pizza chain is likely to get. A chemical engineer and paper scientist, Venditti is also a professor who teaches unit operations of pulp and paper, environmental lifecycle assessment and bioeconomy at North Carolina State University. Given his background, Venditti knows that all pizza boxes can be recycled. But don’t tell that to the guys who work at the waste drop-off center. “I’m a recycling expert—I know what’s going on,” Venditti said. “[But] when I go to my collection center, they yell at me if I try to put [pizza boxes] in the recycle bin.” Secondhand Has the Upper Hand in Designer Fashion That’s because pizza boxes are usually stained with oil or grease that, in the minds of many, make them ineligible for recycling. While this scenario is one incident involving one consumer, the dynamic it represents is a major issue for pizza chains in general—and their marketing in particular. Encouraging customers to recycle their products is a potential win for brands. It burnishes a company’s reputation by promoting sustainability. It especially appeals to younger consumers for whom a company’s environmental track record is important. Recycling messages themselves also furnish multiple opportunities for brand promotions. Yet despite these potential advantages, most pizza brands have stayed on the periphery of the recycling issue, unwilling to wade into the morass of confusion that surrounds it. One question with too many answers Even in a discipline as argument prone as sustainability, there’s scientific consensus that every used pizza box—and we Americans go through roughly 3 billion of them annually—belongs in the blue bin. “We know cardboard boxes are recyclable and so, [with the] pizza box it’s the same thing,” said Patti Boerger, director of PR, content and social media for the trade group Paper and Packaging Board. And despite prevailing assumptions, “grease and cheese don’t impact its ability to be turned into new products,” she added. At the same time, P+PB's own data makes clear that confusion over the recyclability of pizza boxes predominates. A P+PB study from 2021 revealed that only 3 in 5 Americans (57%) are aware that pizza boxes are recyclable. Some of the confusion stems from mistaken assumptions about the circular economy itself. But the larger factor is that local jurisdictions still have widely divergent rules governing what they will accept for recycling—and 73% fail to even disclose their rules at all. “Different towns and cities have different policies based on the customer they’re selling to,” Venditti explained. If the buyer of the recycled paper doesn't want grease or oil in it, then the collection point will probably toss pizza boxes in the trash. In 2020, Domino's decided to start putting recycling messages on its pizza boxes. A missed marketing opportunity Failure to recycle all pizza boxes is obviously an environmental issue. If all boxes got recycled, it would mean 600,000 tons of recovered cardboard back in the supply chain instead of a landfill. But in Boerger’s view, recycling is a branding and marketing issue as well. “Consumers want to do business with brands that have sustainable practices,” she said. “Giving them specific instructions about how to recycle their product helps them feel better about the brand.” One chain that’s taken this message to heart is Domino’s, which decided to position itself as a recycling leader in 2020, covering its boxes with slogans such as “Do Your Slice — Recycle This Pizza Box.” The country’s leading pizza chain (Domino’s did $4.5 billion in revenue in 2022) also has a dedicated page with recycling information including a ZIP code lookup feature that tells customers if their local jurisdictions will take boxes. “Pizza box recycling is something that we were getting questions about—there was a fair amount of consumer confusion,” senior communications director Jenny Fouracre-Petko said. “We just thought it was important, as a company that sends millions of pizza boxes out into the world, to get to the bottom of this.” Domino’s desire to be a leader in recycling extends beyond its customers, added community relations manager Jeannette Sharp. “We have taken this information to our counterparts in the industry,” she said. “I think it would be excellent if they put messaging about recycling the box on there.” Steering clear of controversy For the most part, however, they don’t. You’ll be hard pressed to find even a mention of recycling on the websites of most chains. The universal recycling symbol will occasionally turn up on boxes, but that’s far from a call to arms. In 2019, Pizza Hut experimented with compostable pizza boxes—round ones, no less—but a systemwide rollout never happened. (Pizza Hut did not make a representative available for comment for this story.) Why the reticence? Simply put, the problem of varying and unclear recycling standards across the country makes the situation too fraught for national chains to involve themselves. “It’s challenging for the brands to engage consumers more deeply on [the recycling] topic,” said one pizza chain official who wished not to be identified. “Standards vary from municipality to municipality. Perhaps even more importantly, it's hard to even see how those standards vary because so many municipalities aren't clear on the standards. [We] need a better commitment from municipalities to do what they say they’re going to do and to better communicate to customers.” Until that feat is accomplished, most pizza brands can’t—or won’t—avail themselves of messages that research shows would put them in better standing with customers. A OnePoll study from August, for example, found that 80% of millennials and Gen Z shoppers take a brand’s mission or purpose into account, and over half (51%) actively seek out brands that are ecologically responsible. Given figures like that, a pro-recycling stance is an obvious differentiator. But the restaurant chains are missing out in more direct ways, as well. Can Plastic Shoes Be Recycled? “The [pizza] industry sees a lot of opportunity in engaging consumers around the topic of recycling,” the official said. “It could be part of a loyalty play: return your boxes and receive a discount or points toward your loyalty program. But to make that happen requires some coordination with the same local authorities who are the source of the confusion.” This catch-22 isn’t lost on Boerger, but she suggested one interim solution. A large pizza chain could encourage its operators or franchisees to staple fliers to the boxes that could say something like “This box is made to be recycled—check your local guidelines.” It’s not exactly an industrywide solution, but it’s a start. Even a small amount encouragement to recycle, she said, can mean “a brand lift from consumers when they see that the product is not [going to] waste.”