A report from GlobalWebIndex has revealed that British shoppers are increasingly engaged with the need to reduce their impact on the environment and that they are also keen to see brands do more than just issue platitudes about their own green activities.

80 per cent of the respondents to the report said that they were worried about what the future will hold for the world’s climate, with 64 per cent citing single-use plastics as being at the top of their list of current concerns, according to Internet Retailing.

57 per cent said that they had been proactive in their efforts to cut down on the plastic waste they generated, while 71 per cent said that they were working to boost their own recycling in a domestic setting.

Of course, the companies which want to continue selling to consumers via safe shopping online need to raise their game with regards to their environmental initiatives, since 65 per cent of people questioned in the study said that they had not heard about any key changes announced by the mainstream brands.

There is a general distrust of any claims which retailers and manufacturers do make, with over two-fifths of consumers expressing scepticism about the chances of emission reduction targets being reached by the firms that commit to them.

Part of the problem is that brands are not doing enough to publicise their efforts to reduce their carbon footprints and cut back on waste, so this is perhaps something which should become more commonplace as a marketing tactic, especially now that consumers are almost universally engaged with this issue. Brands will then have to build trust by actually achieving the goals that they set out and prove themselves to customers concerned by climate change.