A short but punchy “fireside” conversation between Helena Mansell-Stopher, POC, and Wendy Mather, RDP Creative, was for many, a highlight of the POC Conference, with Wendy bringing her frank honesty and business nous to sustainable switches.

Wendy Mather is the CEO of RDP Creative, which creates promotional merchandise largely in the family entertainment space, serving as a licensee for many of the major brands.

One such brand RDP is a licensee for is the LEGO Group, also a POC Member, and who’s work with RDP was the focus for Wendy’s conversation at the Conference.

Back in 2019, LEGO asked RDP to remove single-use plastic by 2024, and Wendy agreed but said that they could do it right away. She explained that it was possible since RDP makes everything uniquely for every single customer.

Working with RDP’s creative director, they looked at every item they manufactured to see where they could remove single use plastic, and then weighed the plastic used in every product produced for LEGO. In just one year, RDP had managed to save one tonne of plastic.

This project coincided with Wendy taking ownership of RDP, at which point she made plastic reduction her number one initiative; “we need to stop it across the board,” she said.

So the RDP team started designing all its products with no plastic – no one was allowed to use single use plastic without approval and a critical business reason.

Wendy explained that her customers thought it was going to cost more money – “not true at all; we have not increased the cost of anything to our customers. If anything they have decreased,” said Wendy.

She brought up the product example of LEGO’s Popcorn Boy, which had previously always been sold in plastic bags because it needed to be food grade, but instead Wendy’s team found a solution with a paper alternative that passes food testing. The product is now sold all over the world in the paper bags and it has crucially not cost any more money.

Helena then enquired about how she makes this possible, as for so many companies looking to be more sustainable, cost is a barrier.

Wendy explained that they have minimum order quantities in place, and because of the items its makes across the board, it can use economies of scale and commission factories to make multiple designs, bringing down the cost.

She added that it has made them reduce the number of items they put forward, for example, rather than designing and producing 20 items for a film, reducing it down to 7 and then getting higher volumes, lower price, manufacturing less, creating less waste, and only ordering what people have placed orders for.

“We have timelines and require style guides within a certain period, we can’t airfreight so we need it by a certain time,” explained Wendy, adding that they use both boats as well as trains to transport the products.

It is important to ask whether packing is even needed. “If you are just taking it out and it’s going in the bin, what’s the point? Remove it. You don’t need it. It needs to have a purpose,” said Wendy.

But it is a journey, she agreed, however working with the right partners, such as LEGO, enables it to feel collaborative.

Another example Wendy showed was the butter beer cups RDP makes for Warner Brothers, another POC Member. With the previous design, they could only fit 36 in a box, which meant a lot of space was required for storage. So, Warner Brothers requested them to be redesigned to allow more to fit into a box.

RDP came up with stackable version as a solution, now fitting 80 cups in a box. But because they stacked, there was concern that the printed logo on the cups would scratch so that it had to be put in plastic bag. Wendy did not want to have to do this so air freighted via courier a box of the cups to New York and they arrived perfect, with no damage. They have since been sold for over a year and Wendy explained she has never had any complaints of logo damage, demonstrating that the way things need to be done, isn’t always necessary, and it just takes someone to question it and find new solutions.

Since RDP has taken this direction with its work, “business has grown way up; everything improved by us making this decision,” said Wendy. Leaving us with this final piece of advice: “Just do it. And don’t do business with people who don’t want to do it.”

Conference ticket holders can watch back the full Conference here with your unique passcode you can find in your emails (contact hello@productsofchange.com if any issues). You can also still purchase a digital Conference ticket and get full access to all the recordings of the day here.