Waste and Saving Study

About the study

This two-part study measures Turkish people’s perceptions of waste, their income–expenditure balance, saving habits and motivations, the categories in which they economise and their expectations of brands amid the pandemic and economic crisis. It was published in the April 2021 issue under the cover headline “Salvation Lies in Saving”.

Key findings

• Waste is most often associated with unnecessary consumption, followed by food waste (31.7%), water waste (12%), wasting money (5.2%), wasting time (3.3%) and “sin” (2.8%).
• A large segment has an income below its expenditure: 24.3% say their income is considerably lower than their expenses, while 25.3% say income and expenditure are equal; 5% say their income is considerably higher than their expenses. Saving is not a priority for 64%, and 30.8% do not save at all. The saving rate increased somewhat over the preceding two months.
• The two main motivations for saving are investing in the future and financial hardship (27.3% cite financial hardship as their main motivation). Personal pleasures and clothing are sacrificed most; the general method of saving is to avoid buying non-essential products (87.3%), with the same approach used for cleaning and personal care (72.7%). For 80.7%, saving on food means preparing meals at home instead of eating out.
• Expectations of brands include production that is less harmful to nature (76.2%), support for recycling (17.7%), high-quality, long-lasting products (14.3%) and recyclable packaging (10.7%). The feature also includes external data indicating that Türkiye wasted approximately 642 billion lira in 2019 and that 7.76 million tonnes of food are wasted annually.

Methodology

The study comprised 600 interviews through Aksoy Araştırma’s Eşzamanlı mobile panel, with a reported 95% confidence level and 4% margin of error. Nationwide gender, age and NUTS1 regional quotas were applied using TÜİK’s Address Based Population Registration System (ADNKS) data.

Ertan Aksoy’s assessment (summary)

Ertan Aksoy states that low saving rates are one of the Turkish economy’s structural problems, and that adverse economic developments after 2018 and the pandemic intensified this problem.