Last week the POC team and a handful of its Members congregated for a day of learning and inspiration, hosted at the Difuzed offices just outside Amsterdam.

As POC continues to grow and our reach expand, it is more important than ever that we seize the opportunities for in-person meetings, discussion and collaboration. Which is why we are endeavouring to put more and more dates in your diary for you to come meet with us and the POC network you are a part of.

One such event was our Teemill meeting last month and our Mills Fabrica meet-up earlier in the year.

And just last week of course we brought together our mainland Europe and Netherlands-based contingent, to showcase and share the progress in the region and identify the steps forward.

Helena Mansell-Stopher, founder and CEO of Products of Change opened the meeting with POC’s vision for the future, and our strategic objectives on how we make it a reality. Helena identified and shared some of the reasons why change is so necessary globally, as well as providing an overview of some of the key legislation that is pushing industry forward to get there.

Kim Harms-Schoppink from the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) then took to the floor. She explained that SBTi was set up in 2015 when the Paris Agreement was founded to allow businesses to set targets in line with the latest climate science.

To date, there are 10,000 businesses with targets, 80% of which are validated, and another 2,000 businesses committed to setting themselves targets. Kim highlighted that we are at a point now where the cost of inaction is too high.

Following on was our hosts for the day, Difuzed, a POC Member that is making some remarkable progress on its sustainability journey. Eelco Olivier Boelstra, director of sourcing, buying & logistics at Difuzed, took us through a taste of their journey. Difuzed designs and produces for over 250+ global brands, serving as “the bridge between imagination and execution,” said Eelco.

The company has had a focus on sustainability for over four years, yet Eelco commented that they weren’t yet known for this, but its work with POC could be the beginning of this. “By bringing people together, we can share the challenges,” said Eelco.

Next up was Austin Simms, CEO at Dayrize who spoke about the numerous sustainability challenges that are raining down on businesses at the moment, particularly in the way of legislation, but there is a “real role of technology to make this journey easier,” Austin said. Dayrize has created a suite of technology solutions and platforms to record and measure product level impact and risk data, in alignment with global science and automated at scale.

Austin commented that reporting has sucked some of the momentum out of sustainability progress in recent years but there are ways to make it smoother and more manageable.

“If you wait for perfect data, you’ll never get started,” said Austin.

Dayrize utilises AI agents to fill in data gaps, and can pull data from publicly available sources, from which impact can be modelled. It also connects suppliers with the platform to add in missing primary data.

To end the day, Miriam Geelhoed from Modint, a sector federation in the Netherlands spoke about the collective approach it undertakes with its members. Modint runs projects such as digital product passport (DPP) pilots and a circular cotton project in Tunisia. Miriam addressed the need to educate customers to make the decisions for themselves, especially with the attitude-action gap that is so prevalent in sustainability.

“What an insightful afternoon. Everyone will have left keen to spread the word! As Jeremy from Difuzed highlighted, if more can now be done at the consumer end, to make them more aware of sustainable changes, such as through greater clarity and consistency on labelling, then we can have both the push from licensees and the pull, from retailers and the end consumer,” said Daphne Kellerman, owner, License Connection.

Peter Eagen, commercial director, Wildbrain CPLG  added: “It’s so important as members of POC that we do our utmost to make everyone as aware as possible of the urgency for change, to be ready for the imminent legislation to come into force. There can never be too many collaborative meetings such as we had today at Difuzed.”