It was an early start for Products of Change’s founder Helena Mansell-Stopher when she dialled in for a guest speaker spot on Mattel’s Earth Week Sustainability Summit from the sandy shores of LA this week.
Helena joined Mattel EMEA’s lead sustainability engineer, Elizabeth Eaves for a one-hour discussion on topics spanning the global sustainability spectrum, including incoming legislative changes such as plastic packaging tax and EPR and the power that brands like Mattel have to influence real change at customer and industry level.
Mattel is firmly among the voices leading the global toy and brand licensing industry conversation around sustainability having implemented numerous schemes to educate both customers and the industry on the importance of impact. The international toymaker has even won awards for its efforts in driving sustainability across its products, including a Play for Change Award in the Sustainability category for its 2021/22 Matchbox initiative.
Mattel also boasts a robust ESG strategy across packaging and product development that has seen it launch, in recent years, a toy take-back initiative it has called Mattel Playback.
In a next-level effort to engage its own personnel in the overarching Mattel sustainability strategy, the Barbie brand owner held its own internal Earth Week Sustainability Summit this week, introducing guest speakers throughout the duration, including Products of Change’s Helena Mansell Stopher.
Both Helena and Elizabeth talked through some of the biggest legislative changes heading towards the consumer products industry in the coming months and years, including the Extended Producer Responsibility tax which shifts the burden of cost of end-of-life processing of products and packaging from customers and end consumers onto manufacturers and producers. It’s a tax that encompasses all forms of packaging, whether that’s plastic or card, applying incremental costs measured by a material’s recyclability and carbon and environmental impact.
The pair also discussed the role that a brand like Mattel has to play in carving pathways forward towards a new way of business, from product design and development to the business models we currently operate in, addressing the inefficiencies found within them, and looking to the transition to a circular economy.
“Mattel is such a powerful brand when it comes to sustainability with real insight and a wealth of knowledge on the topic of sustainability,” said Helena. “It’s a business that’s in a fantastic position to lead the way in toy and licensing industry sustainability simply by sharing that knowledge and helping to educate stakeholders around it.”
The sentiment was echoed by sustainability lead, Elizabeth who said that ‘working in this area, innovating new ideas, ways of producing and new business models to work within, such as the circular economy, is an incredibly inspiring and exciting position to be in.”
The summit was held this week in celebration of Earth Week, part of a series of events taking place around the world in the lead up to Earth Day on Saturday, 22nd April.
It’s a week in which the Products of Change founder has found herself in LA participating in a special Earth Week panel session for another titan of the brand licensing industry, Universal Music.
The widespread succession of events taking place this week both in the US and Europe is indicative of the pace at which the sustainability conversation is gathering momentum across the global industry.
