“The most defining decade for business” | Global brands discuss sustainability at Expo 2023

“The most defining decade for business” | Global brands discuss sustainability at Expo 2023

“We are in the most defining decade for business and it’s up to us to find the solutions for its sustainable future.”

This was the take-home message when sustainability leads from some of the most powerful brand owners in the sector – including Disney, Universal Music, NFL Players Association, and the LEGO Group – gathered to discuss the future of licensing at Licensing Expo this week.

Led by Products of Change founder and ceo, Helena Mansell-Stopher, the discussion set out to explore topics spanning the collaborative approach required to measure and reduce scope 3 emissions, the major steps being taken by brand owners to help partners on their journey towards sustainability, and the impact a ‘landscape of environmental legislation’ will soon have on the future of the brand licensing industry in the coming years.

It was on the topic of legislation that the LEGO Group’s licensing sustainability governance lead, Jakob Max Hamman delivered a rallying cry for collaboration across the licensing sector if we are going to solve the common ambition of sustainability.

“Since the European Green Deal was adopted in the EU market, there has been a landscape of legislation that will demand new approaches to product and packaging design, reporting standards, and many other areas of licensing. Collaboration will be key to the understanding of how to approach this all,” he said.

Joined by Sagan Harlin, senior manager of consumer products and strategy at the NFL Players Association, Matt Young, president of Bravado (Universal Music Group), and the Walt Disney Company’s vice president of environmental sustainability, Yalmaz Siddiqui, the session marked the first time in licensing history that such titans of the sector had gathered to talk openly about approaches to sustainable development.

“We definitely have ambitious goals around our carbon footprint,” Disney’s Yalmaz told attendees. “We have just launched three emissions reductions goals that encourage our licensees to get on the journey towards sustainable development by understanding their carbon footprints and working on reducing them – looking at areas like being more energy efficient, reducing packaging, and using different materials.

“We will also be releasing a packaging sustainability toolkit in the coming months and there will be more and more resources available to help our licensees on the road to understanding methodologies to reduce their impact.”

All at varying stages on their journeys with sustainability, the panel session offered an insightful reflection of the licensing sector’s relationship with sustainability so far. It was Bravado’s Matt Young who addressed the demand from fans for better practices and sustainability credentials of the merchandise they purchase, before leaning into the influence that global music artists can have over consumer behaviour.

“The fans are talking and they are concerned,” he said. “This is a need to have, not a nice to have. And a company of our size, we can have an impact and drive change in the music business.”

Bravado currently works with a handful of artists who have committed to their own sustainability ambitions, including to only use sustainable products for their brands. Among them is Billie Eilish who has been active in trying to implement a change of approach to merchandising by looking into the wider use of organic cotton, waster-based inks for printing, reduced shipping, and shopping locally.

“On the merch side, we’re looking at recycled cotton and upcycled fabrics. Several of the companies we work with are plugging themselves into the circular economy,” Matt continued. “We have companies that use the same water in the process over and over instead of fresh water and we even have companies that will recycle our own over stock.

“We try to use vendors that are recycling and upcycling – guys like Everybody World and Rewilder.”

The industry’s biggest barriers

Scope 3 emissions were pinpointed as the industry’s biggest barriers when it comes to sustainable development and it’ here, according to LEGO’s Jakob Max Hamman, that the greatest need for industry collaboration lies.

“Scope 3 is the one we have to understand. We have to work together and build a shared understanding of what direction it will take.”

On the topic, Disney’s Yalmaz said: “Disney’s scope 2 emissions (the energy we buy, such as electricity) are about 1.2 million tonnes. We are trying to reduce those by 46% by 2030 with a strategy around using renewable energy.

“But scope 3 is a complicated concept – as it is everything else that is not burnt (scope 1) or bought (scope 2). That’s everything like an employees carbon footprint as they travel in to work, business travel, all the products we buy for our own use and all those that we license.

“Ultimately, it all starts with conversation like we’re having right now and aligning on what our shared problems are. You want to send a clear signal up and down the supply chain, On product related attributes, there’s value in more conversation.”

“What you’re hearing is it comes down to education and collaboration,” said NFL Players Association’s Sagan Harlin. “We have to work together and help move everyone along on the journey. I think the POC Framework will help everyone on that journey as it breaks it down into digestible steps to take forward.

“Not everybody has the resources to do this and not everyone is doing this as their full-time job, so to have this resource is going to help us push this all forward.”

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