As part of our UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals activation at Licensing Expo 2025, we are showcasing our members and partners that are embodying various SDGs through they work they have done or are doing.

For SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production, we have selected Mattel and Wastebuster for their Recycle to Read initiative, representing their work to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

“Our planet has provided us with an abundance of natural resources.But we have not utilized them responsibly and currently consume far beyond what our planet can provide. We must learn how to use and produce in sustainable ways that will reverse the harm that we have inflicted on the planet.” – The Global Goals.

For SDG 12, the UN has devised eleven targets:

• Implement the ten-year sustainable consumption and production framework;
• Sustainable management and use of natural resources;
• Halve global per capita food waste;
• Responsible management of chemicals and waste;
• Substantially reduce waste generation;
• Encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices and sourcing;
• Promote sustainable public procurement practices;
• Promote universal understanding of sustainable lifestyles;
• Support developing countries’ scientific and technological capacity for sustainable consumption and production;
• Develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable tourism;
• Remove market distortions that encourage wasteful consumption.

Children’s sustainability education platform, Wastebuster, has pioneered a toy circularity programme, Recycle to Read, which enables children and parents to trade in their unwanted or broken hard plastic toys for book vouchers. With the support of Mattel, Tesco, and Products of Change, Recycle to Read is set to roll out in 166 Tesco stores in the UK, and support a significant cross-sector international research programme into the application of the principles of the circular economy to the toy industry.

An estimated 370 million toys were sold in the UK in 2018 but currently there are limited options for recycling broken plastic toys in the UK, and globally. The objective is to reduce the number of toys sent to landfill or incineration (without energy recovery), to engage and inform children about the science behind innovative plastic recycling, and to inspire the adoption of responsible consumer behaviours with compelling characters and entertainment for social change.

A key part of the Recycle to Read programme is to undertake research into finding new solutions for hard to recycle items, to maximise resource recovery and to showcase cutting-edge recycling technologies.

This work by Mattel and Wastebuster embodies SDG 12 by reducing waste generation, promoting sustainable practices, and challenging wasteful consumption in the market.