Products of Change welcomes to its Membership Community Dr. Seuss, a heritage stalwart in the entertainment industry, with an array of deeply recognisable characters and the storytelling to match.
Find out more about the Dr. Seuss brand and its sustainability ambitions:
1. Tell me a bit about what you do
Founded in 1993, Dr. Seuss Enterprises is a global entertainment company. Our mission is to educate and entertain generations around the world by promoting and protecting the literary and artistic works of Dr. Seuss. We provide world-class content that drives joyful learning and creates hopeful futures, across publishing, film and television, licensing, and live experiences, reaching audiences in more than 100 countries. All Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ profits benefit charitable organisations that focus on causes such as education, science, health, animal conservation, and the arts.
2. What does sustainability mean to you?
Since 1971, The Lorax has been the world’s most recognised voice for environmental stewardship, and that story shapes how we think about sustainability across our business. The Lorax speaks for the trees, and for us, sustainability means making sure that message doesn’t stop on the page. It means the products and partnerships carrying that character, and the wider Dr. Seuss name, actually reflect the values the stories have taught generations of readers, and using stories kids already love to help them care about the world around them.
3. Why have you joined POC?
We wanted to be part of a community working on this together rather than in isolation. Sustainability in this industry moves faster and further when brands are aligned on the why, not just competing on the how, and POC felt like the right place to be part of that conversation.
4. What would you like to get out of POC membership?
Real connection with manufacturers, retailers, and licensing partners already doing this well, access to frameworks and best practice we can pass on to our own partners, and a community that will push us to go further rather than just validate what we’re already doing. We’d also like POC to be a place where we can be honest about what’s genuinely difficult about driving this kind of change through a licensing-based business.
5. Sustainability achievements so far?
We’ve built sustainability standards into how we work with our licensing partners, including requirements tied to recognised third-party certifications, so that the products carrying the Dr. Seuss name reflect the same values as the stories themselves. Dr. Seuss Enterprises also proudly supports organisations dedicated to animal conservation and the environment, an extension of the same commitment that runs through the Lorax story itself. It’s an approach we’ve continued to build on, with the goal of making sure the positive impact of a story like The Lorax carries all the way through to the products on shelf.
6. Sustainability ambitions?
Our ambition is to bring more of our partners into this work over time, so these standards become second nature across the portfolio rather than something specific to any one property.
7. Thoughts on sustainability in your industry, challenges and opportunities?
The biggest challenge in licensing and entertainment is that we don’t manufacture anything ourselves, so consistent standards have to travel through a lot of partners and supply chains. The opportunity is that a character like The Lorax has real emotional reach with kids and families, and stories that people already trust are one of the most powerful tools this industry has for making sustainability land, not just as a message, but as something people actually act on.
