For the first time in Licensing Expo history, Products of Change brought leading actors from across the industry – including the Walt Disney Company, the LEGO Group, Informa Markets, and the sustainable toy brand Shore Buddies – together for a special roundtable discussion on licensing’s carbon impact. 

Marking a truly international gathering, the hour-long discussion session welcomed voices from across the North American, UK, European, and Australian markets representing a mix of brand owners, licensing manufacturers, technology and service providers, and even the Licensing Expo trade show organisers themselves.

The open forum discussion sought to explore the subject of the global licensing industry’s carbon impact and the steps and plans businesses across the global scene currently have in place to measure, track, and reduce their scope 1, scope 2, and even scope 3 emissions.

Having joined Products of Change at the License Global Stage that same week to walk attendees through their own ESG developments before diving into the subject of sustainable packaging design, both Disney’s vice president of environmental sustainability Yalmaz Siddiqui and the LEGO Group’s business development and sustainability governance of LEGO partnerships, licensing, and publishing, Jakob Max Hamann joined the roundtable discussion to talk wider impact.

Discussion navigated some of the biggest factors to currently be driving the industry’s collective ESG efforts forwards, including the demands being made at a retail level upon its suppliers and supply chain, as well as the standards now being set by global brand owners such as the Walt Disney Company. 

Of the global top ten biggest brand owners, the Walt Disney Company is currently the only one to have a 2030 net zero ambition made in alignment with the Science Based Targets initiative. The LEGO Group’s own SBTi aligned target is for net zero by 2040 and a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2032.

It’s why both Disney and the LEGO Group have been playing such an active and influential role in the latest Products of Change project to set out an industry-wide standard and methodology for measuring, tracking, and ultimately reducing the global industry’s scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions.

A cross-industry collaborative project that is now underway, the Products of Change Carbon Workstream is on the pathway to deciding upon a collective approach, which will be taken to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol with whom it will eventually be certified as the global industry standard. 

While this year marked the second year running that Products of Change hosted its on-booth industry roundtable sessions, the 2024 show was the first time these plans were brought to the public forum, offering a clear indication of the advancing collective mindset of the international brand licensing industry.