Earth Day is rolling around this year on Wednesday 22 April, mobilising our planet’s inhabitants to celebrate and protect the world we live in.
Products of Change is marking the day with a number of activations POC Members can get involved in.
First of all, we’d love to hear from you: how are you celebrating Earth Day at your company? Send us a message or tag us in your LinkedIn posts and we will share what our Community is up to.
Turning waste into a commodity webinar
We will also be hosting a webinar, together with Material Rebellion: Turning waste into a commodity: Upcycling at scale at 16:00 BST | 17:00 CEST | 11:00 EDT | 08:00 PDT | 01:00 AEST.
The webinar will question – What if waste wasn’t the end of the story – but the beginning of value? It will explore how the materials we discard today could become tomorrow’s most powerful commodity, finding profit in what was once considered “waste,” unlocking new supply chain efficiencies, while staying ahead of rapidly evolving European Union regulations.
As pressure mounts to design out waste and rethink production from the ground up, this session will challenge how you see materials, value, and responsibility in your business. In the spirit of Earth Day, it’s not just about compliance, it’s about transformation, opportunity, and building systems that actually work for the future.
Register for your place in the webinar here.
Products of Change: A driving force for sustainability in toys – panel discussion
In celebration of Earth Day, the Women in Toy Sustainability Learning Committee will host a virtual panel webinar featuring Helena Mansell-Stopher from Products of Change and Sandra Sierra of Jazwares moderated by Paola Dyboski from Dr Zigs.
In this session, Sandra will share practical insights from embedding sustainability within a global toy company – what’s working in practice, where the real operational challenges lie and how brands, manufacturers and retailers can move from ambition to delivery. Helena will introduce Products of Change and its new licensee sustainability benchmarking tool, designed to help brands and licensees assess progress, identify gaps and drive more consistent sustainability standards across licensing supply chains.
If you work in toys, licensing or retail, this is a chance to hear directly from leaders turning ambition into action and to join the wider industry conversation on building a more sustainable future.
Full official launch of Wastebuster’s Recycle to Read initiative
Recycle to Read is an initiative cofounded by Wastebuster and Products of Change to collect broken hard plastic toys via Tesco stores across the UK, which are then assessed and recycled. The scheme now covers 167 large Tesco stores, sponsored by Mattel, for an industry-wide cross-sector international research programme exploring the application of circular economy principles within the toy industry.
Contributing children earn books for their schools in an additional push for child literacy; 1 in 7 UK schools does not have a library, and around 1 in 15 children do not own a book of their own at home, a problem Recycle to Read is tackling alongside the lack of real end-of-life solutions for broken toys.
Recovered toys are sorted and mechanically processed in the UK by authorised recycling partners; plastics separated and converted into recycled feedstock suitable for use in the manufacture of new products containing post-consumer recycled content.
Despite the fact that Recycle to Read has been only trialling and scaling its programme over the last couple of years, already over 800 schools have signed up, and it has collected over 13 tons over a 10-month period, without any focused promotion. This demonstrates the willingness and engagement of the UK consumer for playing their part and contributing to this scheme.
Now, the external marketing and communication begins, expanding the initiative even further, getting more families and schools involved, and collecting numerous more hard plastic toys to give them the-end-of-life solution they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Find out more and get involved here: www.wastebuster.co.uk.
