With a focus on some clear and decisive carbon emissions reductions across its UK and EMEA operations and a headline-grabbing sustainable overhaul of the packaging of one of its best-selling licensed lines, 2023 made for quite the year for the international toy company Sambro’s sustainable development.
As the industry prepares itself for the mania of London Toy Fair next week, we catch up with Sambro’s buying and sourcing director, Ed Whieldon to explore the company’s biggest sustainability wins of the last 12 months and peek in to the future the toy business is envisioning now it’s researching the science based targets it wants to achieve.
Hi Ed, it’s great to chat with you – particularly given the year Sambro has had in terms of its sustainable development. We’ve seen the company’s reductions in Scope 1 and 2 emissions in UK and EMEA and its recyclable packaging swap become major industry headlines. How would you summarise the last 12 months for Sambro?
Yes, 2023 really has been a significant year for Sambro in terms of its sustainable development. Not only did we report a 10% reduction in our overall scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions across our UK and EMEA offices, we have also made concerted efforts to reduce energy consumption across the board.
This included looking at everything from our operations, such as the introduction of new lighting systems in our warehouses to reduce energy consumption, to education and engagement, ensuring all employees are aware of our ESG goals and have the right support to reduce energy consumption for their role.
Our biggest achievement, however, has been the switch to 100% renewable energy at our UK headquarters, which has ensured we are ahead of the curve, not just against our competitors but in the industry as a whole.
So that makes for quite the productive year. It begs the question: what are the next steps? What plan do you have in place to outdo yourselves and continue that progress for 2024?
You’re right – it was rather the productive year. And actually, Sambro is independently audited annually to assess progress made and a gap analysis report is provided to help shape the following years’ targets. Having seen our level progress to “Excellent” this year, the report highlighted an area of focus for us would be our Governance and Social agendas.
We are also currently researching specific Science based targets such as reducing our total emissions by 2030 within scope 3 and undertaking a full analysis of our supply chain in the form of a materiality assessment.
In industry terms, 2023 was also a big year for you guys in the form of new partnerships – we saw you pick up Toikido’s Smashlings and launch new Bing toys among many other announcements. How are your sustainability plans feeding into or working across these kind of new partnerships?
Establishing close working relationships with new or any licensor is critical from a commercial and product development point of view, and we class ESG as equally important so establishing these working relationships with their counterparts and leaders in this area is important to ensure we are aligned with their plans too.
Our sustainability efforts have been met with an extremely positive response from our partners and customers. We all recognise that there are steps to be made when it comes to sustainability in the toy industry and these changes are being made by many of the bigger brands and slowly filtering down to us.
But at Sambro we don’t want to follow the lead of others, we want to continue being industry game changers in this space, pushing to continually better ourselves and become an aspiration for others in the industry.
From projects like removing plastic packaging to more sustainable materials or adding marks such as FSC and expediting these through the approval processes has certainly helped us to quickly deliver these improvements. In addition, a number of partners have run specific training sessions with us to highlight their key focuses around suitability
Ah so that really is interesting and great to hear about the cross-stakeholder engagement that you’re driving. So, what big changes or projects can we expect to see from Sambro this year? 2022 was the switch to renewable energy, 2023 was the scope 1 and 2 reductions… have you got plans in place to start measuring and tackling scope 3 emissions?
We’re always looking to better ourselves at Sambro so although we’re doing fantastically well and way above the industry standard for ESG, there’s always room for continual improvement.
Setting science-based targets is a huge step forward and something that will push Sambro even further into the spotlight of sustainability. In addition to this, we will build on our knowledge of our supply chain and dive deeper into the environmental issues our factory base is faced with. We have already completed environmental assessments on our core factories our next step is to help them continuously improve and roll it out across the board.
You guys have already taken a pretty inspiring position of leadership in design (and redesign) and applying that to popular lines (like the Peppa Pig plastic eggs-turned recyclable boxes project). How important is this sort of role to you guys?
Our Peppa Pig plastic egg recyclable packaging really was a stroke of genius from our Design, Product, and ESG teams and is a fantastic example of the strategic end-to-end expertise we can offer customers.
Reimagining this packaging for one of our best-selling lines will not only help save 12.8 tonnes of plastic a year, but also adds an extra play element, increasing retailer and consumer appeal. It’s a win win!
The end-result is a new paper-based packaging design inspired by milk-cartons, which is fully recyclable, including the bag that holds the stuffing for the toy. There are also additional design elements such as the paper tie and gift bag, which allow it to be reimagined as a gift line.
It’s definitely important to us to be in a leading position when it comes to ESG and we can only hope to continue to build on these for other customers and brands.
How receptive have customers (both end consumers and toy shops or stockists) been to the changes you have made so far?
We have certainly found with some of our key partners they have welcomed the alignment of the work we have been doing with their own policies and in some cases been surprised and delighted with how far ahead we are with the work we have been doing. There is certainly a greater demand form a consumer point of view for more sustainability from both parents and children.
The biggest challenge here for us though is the difference between the emotional currency of a consumer purchase of a sustainable product and the conversion to a commercial currency
What do you think 2024 holds in terms of progressing action around sustainability in business and industry? What’s next for the toy space, do you think?
There are still challenges within the industry particularly for SME’s, in some cases these sustainable initiatives come at a cost, and this cost certainly should be shared right through the product lifecycle. More collaborative working and joint initiatives should certainly help here.
The beginning of the implementation of digital product passports is right around the corner and we plan to be ready well in advance of this deadline, for some in the toy industry this can be challenging, especially across categories where there are multiple component parts.
Materials and material assessments will be important there are so many options it seems out there the goal is to find the clear winners in that space that deliver on genuine sustainability costs and quality.
Ed, this has been illuminating and interesting and I thank you for taking time out a busy schedule, right before London Toy Fair, to chat with us. Before we release you… have you any thoughts you’d like to leave us with?
Well, yes. We have actively seen some step changes at Sambro around some of our ESG pillars, in particular our social pillars. We have now introduced fully trained mental health first aiders in the business along with providing menopause training for management and installing ‘ambassadors’ across departments to ensure an inclusive working environment.
At Sambro, it is the team – our people – who make us who we are and the engagement of our business towards our ESG goals make it a lot easier
