A panel session exploring the sustainable pathway laid out by The Walt Disney Company and the LEGO Group placed an emphasis on innovating both business models and product design, when it took place at Licensing Expo 2024 this week.
Yalmaz Siddiqui, vice president of environmental sustainability at Disney and Jakob Max Hamann, business development and sustainability governance of LEGO partnerships, licensing, and publishing joined Products of Change for an explorative and informative session on product packaging at the License Global Theatre yesterday.
During the session, both Yalmaz and Jakob regaled an audience with insight and updates from across their respective sustainability reports and ESG plans. The Walt Disney Company is currently the only licensor or brand owner to have a firm commitment to reach net zero by 2030.
The LEGO Group is committed to achieve net zero by 2040.
The session took on discussion of not only packaging design, the importance of designing for recycling and circularity and designing out waste, but also explored the broader subject of sustainability within the industry landscape.
Yalmaz kicked off the session with an outline of just what is meant when companies talk about their scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions before giving a run through of some of the incoming legislation set to turn the business landscape on its head in the next year.
These include the corporate sustainability due diligence directive, the corporate sustainability reporting directive, Extended Producer Responsibility laws, and the EU packaging and packaging waste regulations.
Insisting that now was the time to adapt to the changes by thinking differently about business, design, and products packaging, Yalmaz said: “We can panic about the incoming legislation, or we can get innovative.”
Both the LEGO Group and The Walt Disney Company shared slides depicting the design innovations each had applied to their licensed product packaging that enabled product developers remove single waste plastic and start to design waste out of their packaging concepts.
The LEGO Group has been pursuing a mission to remove single use plastic from all its packaging by 2025. The Danish toymaker is making keen headway in this mission switching plastics out for alternative materials like FSC certified card and paper.
A selection of these packaging innovations can be found at the Products of Change booth, S226 at Licensing Expo.
