Lightweight packaging: the thinner it feels, the more likely it ends up in the bin

Lightweight packaging has become one of the most popular sustainability tools of the past two decades: less raw material, lower transport weight, lower cost. A new study from the University of Georgia (UGA), however, points to an uncomfortable side effect: consumers are noticeably more likely to throw a thinner, crinkly bottle, a lighter paper bag or a flimsy envelope into general waste than a thicker, denser version. What counts as waste prevention inside the factory gate can become lost secondary raw material in the household.

In short: According to five studies from the University of Georgia, lightweight packaging is more likely to end up in general waste, because consumers perceive low-density, thin material as less valuable and feel less bad about throwing it away. In the experiment, a simple on-pack message (“it still has value”) was enough to cancel out this effect.

What did the University of Georgia study examine?

Lyndsay Loomer and Sarah C. Whitley, researchers at the marketing department of UGA’s Terry College of Business, published their study (Through thick and thin? When sustainable packaging design increases consumer waste generation) open access in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science in September 2026. The university’s news service presented the findings to the public on 2 November.

The research question grew out of practical experience. Before her doctorate, Loomer worked in brand marketing for a beverage manufacturer in Texas when the company introduced lightweight, “crinkly” bottles in the late 2010s. Market research showed that shoppers had no problem buying the thinner bottles – the open question was what happened to them once they were empty.

The authors’ key concept is packaging density, the ratio of mass to volume. Lightweighting reduces exactly this: the same volume is wrapped in less material. Earlier research looked at density at the point of purchase, where it signals quality but matters less than price and brand. At the point of disposal, however, the package is empty and its physical properties come to the fore.

Five studies, one direction: what feels flimsy goes in the trash

The paper rests on five main studies (plus seven more in the appendix), combining field observation with laboratory experiments.

Pilot study – bottles at a campus lecture. In spring 2022 a major beverage manufacturer was switching one of its bottled water brands to a lightweight bottle, so both the legacy 15-gram and the new 9-gram 500 ml bottle were on sale at the same time (a difference of more than 40%). The researchers placed the two bottle types in alternating rows in a 300-seat auditorium, then sorted the trash and recycling bins at the exits after the event. Some of the lightweight bottles ended up in the trash, none of the legacy ones did – although the sample was very small (only 20 bottles reached the bins).

Study 1 – a waste audit in one building. The contents of 38 bins (19 trash, 19 recycling) on one floor of a university building were collected for a week, and every plastic beverage container was weighed. In the 172-item sample, containers in the recycling bins were on average around 60% denser than those in the trash. The effect stayed strong when the model included already known drivers: transparency, colour, cleanliness, distortion and the presence of a label.

Study 2 – a lab experiment with paper. 218 university students were given a sheet of paper of identical size and colour with no design: one group received newsprint-like paper (about 60 g/m²), the other cardstock-like paper (about 250 g/m²). Lidded trash and recycling bins stood at the lab exit. The thin paper was trashed by 40.7% of participants, the thick paper by 26.4%.

Study 3 – the mechanism. 375 online participants decided what to do with a paper bag left over from a takeaway lunch: one description resembled a thin bakery bag, the other a thick grocery bag, with the same image shown in both cases. 23.0% would have trashed the thin bag and 14.4% the thick one – and this time the researchers also measured why.

Study 4 – the fix. For an empty paper envelope received at an event, more people intended to throw away the thin envelope than the thick one. But when a short label on the back of the thin envelope said it still held value after use, disposal intention dropped to the same level as for the thick envelope.

Behind the headlines: what do the 92% and 52% figures mean?

The university’s press release highlights two striking figures, and both are worth reading precisely before anyone turns them into slogans.

The claim that lightweight items are “up to 92% more likely to end up in landfills” is an odds ratio from Study 2: the odds of trashing were about 0.69 for thin paper and about 0.36 for thick paper, a ratio of 1.92. Expressed as probabilities, that is 40.7% versus 26.4% – the thin paper was trashed roughly one and a half times as often. That is a substantial gap, but not the same thing that “92%” suggests at first glance.

The strongest number from Study 1 is also an odds ratio: according to the model, each additional gram per fluid ounce of density makes recycling nearly ten times more likely in odds terms. That is how a regression coefficient is interpreted; it does not mean ten times as many people put a thicker bottle in the recycling bin.

The “52% more recycling” figure comes from the field extension of Study 4: 19.6% of labelled envelopes and 12.9% of unlabelled ones were recycled. That is indeed a 52% relative difference, but only 58 of the 226 envelopes handed out were found in the bins, and the difference is not statistically significant. The authors say so themselves; the reliable evidence for the label’s effect comes from the controlled online experiment.

The point is not that the research is weak – five different methods across two materials all point the same way – but that the size of the effect should be handled soberly.

Why do we throw it away? Value, quality and waste aversion

The most interesting part of the study is the mechanism. According to the authors, at the moment of disposal consumers make a quick, intuitive judgement about how “disposable” an item is, and that judgement has two components:

• a value assessment – how good and how valuable the packaging feels,
• an emotional reaction – how uncomfortable it feels to throw it in the trash (known in the literature as waste aversion).

Study 3 confirmed this with a serial mediation model: lower density leads to lower perceived quality, then lower perceived value, which in turn lowers waste aversion – and this last step is what leads to the trash bin. An important detail is that neither quality nor value alone explained the decision. Seeing something as lower quality only leads to the trash when throwing it away does not feel bad.

The researchers ruled out several alternative explanations: the effect was not driven by the item’s shape or prototypicality, by political affiliation, or by a belief that recycling thin material “isn’t worth it anyway”.

This echoes a familiar pattern in everyday waste sorting: a thick, rigid box feels “worth” sorting, while thin film, a rattling tray or a soft bag feels like “just rubbish”. The study’s contribution is to make that intuition measurable.

The lightweight packaging paradox from the producer’s perspective

Lightweight packaging therefore both supports and undermines circular economy goals. A simple worked example using the study’s numbers shows the trap.

Take the 15-gram and 9-gram bottles and apply the Study 2 disposal rates to them (an illustration, not real market data):

• material landfilled or incinerated per bottle: 15 g × 26.4% ≈ 4.0 g versus 9 g × 40.7% ≈ 3.7 g,
• material collected for recycling per bottle: 15 g × 73.6% ≈ 11.0 g versus 9 g × 59.3% ≈ 5.3 g.

Even with worse consumer behaviour, lightweighting still produces less residual waste by mass – this matters and should not be glossed over. At the same time, the mass-based recycling rate falls from 74% to 59%, and the amount of recovered secondary raw material is roughly halved.

That second effect threatens brand owners’ own targets. More and more producers commit to bottles made from 100% recycled PET, while food-grade rPET is already scarce. If lightweighting means less material comes back from collection, producers are narrowing their own feedstock supply. This is a market in which material-level recycling performance – not just collection – decides whether systems meet EU requirements, as our review of Hungary’s waste management system explained.

Using the Study 1 data, the authors also calculated a tipping point: below a density of 0.714 g per fluid ounce (≈24 g per litre), the probability of trashing exceeds 50% and rises quickly from there. For a 500 ml bottle this corresponds to roughly 12 grams – the legacy 15-gram bottle sat above it, the new 9-gram bottle below. The number is specific to that US sample, but the method can be repeated by any manufacturer for its own product range.

One sentence on the label: “it still has value”

The most encouraging result is that the effect can be managed through communication. A single sentence on the back of the envelope, reminding people that the packaging still has value after use, closed the gap caused by density. The authors note that producers typically use on-pack space to advertise targets already achieved (“100% recycled bottle”), when the same space could nudge consumers toward correct disposal.

This also adds a behavioural layer to the design-for-recycling debate. Germany’s 2026 recyclability minimum standard measures recyclability as the share by weight that can actually be recovered through sorting and recycling – but every such calculation assumes the package reaches the right bin in the first place. The UGA study suggests that for low-density packaging, that assumption is weaker than designers think.

What does this mean for Europe and Hungary?

The research was carried out in the United States, where consumers typically choose between a trash bin and a “recycling” bin. Three important differences and one warning apply to the European and Hungarian context.

For beverage bottles, the deposit is the “value message”. Since 2024 most single-use beverage containers in Hungary carry a deposit, so in the consumer’s eyes the bottle has a value that can literally be expressed in forints. This is exactly the mechanism that the Study 4 label created artificially. It is a reasonable assumption – though not yet measured locally – that the density effect is much weaker for deposit-bearing bottles.

For yellow-bin packaging, the effect may apply in full. The thinnest packaging types – films, thin-walled trays and cups, light paper bags – are precisely the ones outside deposit systems, with no money back for anyone. These are already the problem streams: PET trays are recycled at barely a third of the plastic packaging average, flexible plastics at under 15%, and small-format packaging is lost largely because of its physical characteristics. Sorting plants working with mixed lightweight packaging, such as the projects behind AI-supported sorting, depend on both the quantity and the cleanliness of what consumers put in the bin.

Regulation pushes toward lightweighting. The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) requires the weight and volume of packaging to be minimised, while expecting all packaging to be recyclable by 2030 and making recycled content mandatory for plastics. According to the UGA study, these two goals can collide through consumer behaviour – material saved on the drawing board can be partly lost at collection.

The warning: a European household is not a two-bin US university building. Behaviour-change campaigns usually focus on material types and bin colours. Based on the UGA findings, it would be worth addressing how packaging feels as well: thin plastic is still plastic, soft paper is still paper.

Limitations worth keeping in mind

The study is strong but not flawless, and practical conclusions should account for its limitations:

• US samples – university students, university buildings and an online panel (MTurk); behaviour in Europe, especially in countries with deposit systems, may differ,
• small field samples – 20 bottles in the pilot study and 58 envelopes in the field test; these are indicative, not conclusive,
• intention versus behaviour – Studies 3 and 4 measured disposal intention rather than actual behaviour, although Studies 1 and 2 were based on real behaviour,
• a single physical attribute – the authors themselves note that texture, shape or surface sheen may also influence the decision, which the study did not examine.

Expert summary

The University of Georgia study does not say that lightweighting is a bad decision. It says that packaging sustainability cannot be measured only at the end of the production line: material saved in the factory can become waste that feels worthless in the consumer’s hand. From a waste management perspective this is a familiar lesson – the decision made in front of the bin is as much a part of the packaging life cycle as the injection moulding.

The good news is that the effect can be managed. Producers can calculate, for their own products, the density threshold below which packaging starts to feel like “rubbish” and further lightweighting stops paying off – and the packaging itself can tell consumers that it is not worthless after use. The question is whether brands will keep using the most valuable surface on the pack to advertise their own achievements, or use it to make sure the packaging actually comes back.

---

Lightweight packaging – frequently asked questions

Why do consumers throw away lightweight packaging more often?

Because thin, low-density material feels less valuable. According to the University of Georgia study, lower density reduces perceived quality and value, which in turn weakens the discomfort people feel when throwing away something useful. When disposal does not feel wasteful, the packaging is more likely to end up in general waste.

How big is the difference in disposal between thin and thick packaging?

In the lab experiment, 40.7% of participants trashed the thin paper and 26.4% the thick paper. The “92%” figure quoted in the press is an odds ratio derived from this, not a probability. In the online paper bag experiment the rates were 23.0% and 14.4%, so the thin version was trashed roughly one and a half times as often.

How can trashing of lightweight packaging be reduced?

With a simple on-pack message. In the experiment, a label on the thin envelope saying the packaging still has value after use reduced disposal intention to the same level as for the thick envelope. Producers can also calculate, for their own products, the density threshold below which packaging starts to feel like rubbish.

Is lightweighting packaging a bad decision?

Not necessarily. Using the study’s numbers, a lighter bottle still sends less material to landfill by mass, even with worse consumer behaviour. However, the amount of recovered secondary raw material and the recycling rate both fall, which threatens producer targets that rely on recycled PET supply.

Do the findings apply in Europe and Hungary?

Partly. The study used US samples. In Hungary most beverage bottles carry a deposit and therefore a monetary value, which probably weakens the effect. For thin packaging outside deposit systems – films, trays, cups and paper bags – the effect may apply in full.

---

🔗 Official sources and references: 👉

• Loomer, L. & Whitley, S. C. (2026): Through thick and thin? When sustainable packaging design increases consumer waste generation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-026-01208-7
• University of Georgia – UGA Today (2 November 2026): Lightweight bottles and boxes up to 92% more likely to end up in landfills. https://news.uga.edu/thick-or-thin-plastic/

Consistent structure, quick answers: every article is built so that both readers and AI search tools can find the key points easily. Our content is produced with the help of AI tools and reviewed by our editor.