Episode 125: ‘How Licensing is Driving Environmental and Social Impact at Scale’ with Helena Mansell-Stopher, CEO, Products of Change (POC)
In this episode of Can Marketing Save the Planet, we are joined by Helena Mansell-Stopher, CEO of Products of Change (POC). POC, is a brilliant and active membership organisation working with over 1,400 people across brands, manufacturers, and retailers to come together and drive environmental and social change.
This part of Helena's journey started at National Geographic, where she had the idea and insight to start connecting incubator brands doing things differently with retail distribution, while also helping larger brands learn from them. What started as a think tank six years ago has now become a movement with international reach. "Education is the biggest barrier, people in industry are problem solvers. If they know what problem they need to solve and why, they'll get on and find a solution."
A key focus of Products of Change is shifting the language of sustainability from moral obligation to smart business. "We've got to start using more business language. It's how you're reducing your impact, reducing the cost of that, mitigating taxes, reducing risk because you're enabling your supply chains to be more robust." Helena shares the example of, UK Greetings who have been on a 6 year journey. They removed glitter and single-use plastic from their cards, and brought back a lot of their production to the UK, and as a result, have seen double-digit growth, retained staff, and unlocked creativity through paper engineering.
We delve into POC’s initiatives such as ‘Recycle to Read’, a programme Helena explains, "showcases that our waste has a value." ‘Recycle to Read’ enables children to swap or recycle toys, earning Planet Care points that translate into free books for their school through a Harper Collins partnership. They collected 15 tons of hard plastic toys last year in a small Tesco trial (now rolled out to 160 stores), with no PR. It’s a programme which is building the blueprint for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in toys.
Helena talks about the POC Conference held annually, where the industry gathers to share innovations from brands such as Lego, Disney, Universal Music Groups and Primark. She also shares the work they do on ‘The Partner Maturity Index’, which was built with investment from Netflix and Paramount. The Index further accelerates progress by allowing manufacturers to fill in their sustainability data once and share it with all the brands they work with, reducing duplication whilst also benchmarking industry maturity.
This is a really great listen!
Tune in as we talk to Helena about:
How Products of Change grew from a think tank to a global membership organisation.
Why sustainability conversations must be framed as business resilience, risk mitigation, and cost reduction.
How working as an industry can make change happen faster.
Recycle to Read – getting value from waste.
Why honesty in marketing is so important and how the language needs to change.
Find out more visit https://www.productsofchange.com/
For The Partner Maturity Index see here
Details of the 2026 POC Sustainability Conference
Enjoy…
With love
Michelle & Gemma
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