Can Recycling Increase Your Attractiveness?
Who knew that recycling could make people consider you more attractive? Usually when I’m at a restaurant or and at party and ask “is there somewhere that this can be recycled?” the response I get is “Are you serious? Relax.” but according to the results of a poll by PepsiCo I may be hanging around the wrong people.
During a survey of 1,140 Americans, PepsiCo found that many Americans over the age of 18 find recycling an attractive, mate worthy trait. Hooray!
The study found the following:
– 40% of people said they would have a more positive opinion of someone if they learned they recycled
– 21% of people said they would be turned off if they found out on the first date the other person didn’t recycle.
– 2 in 5 respondents want a significant other who cares about the environment
Improved sex appeal (attractiveness) is a pretty powerful incentive. For many people increasing attractiveness may be a more powerful incentive then increasing sustainability and doing our part to protect the environment.
Of course, the numbers still need to be improved upon. Only 2 in 5 people want a significant other who cares about the environment? I personally would appreciate higher numbers, but websites like Glamour and Yahoo found PepsiCo’s findings significant enough to share.
Though only 40% said that finding out the other person recycled would increase their positive perception of the person, it’s still a higher percent then finding out the person has a graduate degree (25%) , impressive job (18%), or good saving (8%).
I would also like to bring up another thing to consider when thinking about the “positive results” of PepsiCo’s study. There is a bias to self reporting. Most people wouldn’t admit out loud that they prefer a person with status to a person with environmental values. So the accuracy of the results can be questioned.
But any way you interpret it, recycling probably won’t hurt your appeal.
bubble love via shutterstock
young couple via shutterstock