Mattel: Play, Recycle, Repeat

Mattel is ubiquitous.

Hot Wheels, Fisher Price and Barbie? You’d be hard-pressed to find a parent or child in the world who hasn’t at least heard of its products.

Mattel in recent years has adopted a digital-first strategy, to adapt to the changing toy market and entertainment landscape.

The company adjusted its focus from television ads to social media brand-building, reaching a new audience of sticky consumers. 

This strategy has brought them significant success, leading to the explosive event that was last year’s Barbie movie, the highest-grossing film worldwide in 2023.

Another area where Mattel has made transformative changes is in regards to its sustainability and circularity. 

Well aware of the environmental challenges of toys, the manufacturer has adopted an innovative recycling and repurposing platform to ensure fewer end up in landfills and more end up brightening homes. 

Mattel, through a series of helpful services, is interrupting the unfortunate, almost involuntary cycle we see with teddies, trucks and toy kitchens alike: we play, and then throw away.

Toys: We play, then throw away 

Historically, toy manufacturing looked very different. 

Toys were handmade, like wooden cups, balls and yo-yos of Mediaeval Europe. Or like the stone, cotton and porcelain dolls that have existed for play, protection and rituals in virtually every historic culture on earth, like ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.

The Industrial Revolution introduced mechanised toy production in the mid-19th century.

The use of metal and plastic then became widespread in this mass manufacturing. Tin toys, like soldiers, wind-up cars and trains grew in popularity in the early to mid-twentieth century. 

Even with the rise of mass production, throwing away toys was considered unthinkable back then.

They were family heirlooms, being more expensive and difficult to obtain compared to today.

As manufacturing grew more sophisticated, plastics started to occupy a bigger role in toy manufacturing, replacing ivory in billiard balls in 1869.

Cheap, reliable, easy to work with and highly customisable, their dominance was swift and their presence is now pervasive.

Plastics changed everything, massively speeding up the manufacturing process and enabling profoundly diverse combinations of shapes, textures and moulds.

But their convenience and creative benefit have been at the cost of the planet. 

A staggering 80% of all toys end up in landfills, the ocean or the incinerator, accounting for almost 6% of landfill plastics. 

Annual plastic production is expected to reach more than 56 gigatons by 2050, with a gigaton equalling the mass of 200 million elephants.

Driving this is how challenging it is to recycle plastic toys or any form of plastic because of its complex form and chemical additives. 

Mattel has made clear its ambition to reduce plastic packaging by 25% per product by 2030. 

“At Mattel, our aim is to contribute to a more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and sustainable future,” says Ynon Kreiz, Chairman and CEO, Mattel. 

“The progress across our ESG strategy and goals, and our new goal announced, reflects our ongoing commitment to corporate citizenship and our purpose to empower the next generation to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential.”

Mattel is therefore embracing a range of strategies to confront the sustainability challenges of plastic.

All of these strategies prioritise reducing resource consumption and waste throughout the value chain. 

Implementing key circular economy and eco-design principles when developing products and packaging is the biggest consideration for Mattel.

Products: Reusing and repurposing toys 

Mattel’s PlayBack Program is a solution that allows consumers to return their toys at no charge for recycling, reuse and in some cases responsible disposal.

Where possible through recycling and program partners, Mattel endeavours to convert used toys into new, useful creations. 

This could be through converting their waste to energy, turning them into post-consumer recycled content or transforming them into new items like playground equipment. 

“Mattel toys are made to last and be passed on from generation to generation,” said Richard Dickson, former President and Chief Operating Officer for Mattel and current CEO at the Gap.

“A key part of our product design process is a relentless focus on innovation, and finding sustainable solutions is one significant way we are innovating.

"Our Mattel PlayBack program is a great example of this, enabling us to turn materials from toys that have lived their useful life into recycled materials for new products.”   

A similar scheme is run at Mattel’s American Girl Doll Hospital, where consumers can ‘admit’ beloved dolls in-store or online for treatment- ergo to be repaired or restored. 

Common services include reattaching limbs, replacing eyes removing stains, and preventing the dolls from being thrown away while still maintaining the magic of the brand through the hospital theming.

American girl dolls are modern-day heirloom toys- premium quality objects meant to be passed down through generations.

Mattel, by maintaining replacement parts for at least 15 years after a doll model’s retirement date ensures that most parts that are broken or worn can be fixed or replaced.

An insightful decision, considering nearly a quarter of the dolls they repair are 10 years old or older.

They also offer ‘wellness visit’ services where the dolls can be cleaned, have their ears pierced or have their hair restyled. 

Once services are complete the doll is sent on their way with a charming Certificate of Good Health.

In 2020, the American Girl Doll Hospital repaired more than 28,000 dolls, incredibly extending the play and lifetime of each.

Packaging: Circularity, recycling & recovery

Even if consumers buy a toy and keep it in the family for generations, it's unlikely they’ll do the same with its packaging. 

For this reason, Mattel has invested a lot of research and effort into implementing eco-design and circular economic principles into its packaging.

Not only does it seek to create packaging with a playtime purpose, but it also endeavours to consider environmental impact at every step. 

By leveraging in-house and third-party life cycle assessment tools, collaborating with other companies and seeking out advice from circular economic experts Mattel has devised four key guiding principles for optimising its packaging and product design.

These principles are part of its overall approach to the circular economy.

The circular economy is a model aimed at eliminating waste and promoting the continual use of resources.

Packaging is a key consideration for Mattel when it comes to creating this economic circularity, eliminating waste and promoting continual resource use.

The company aims for packaging that reduces its environmental impact, uses fewer resources and replaces unsustainable resources where possible with recycled or renewable materials. 

Mattel aims for its packaging to be part of the play pattern of the product and useful in terms of storage, so it isn’t deemed unnecessary and discarded. 

The company is also committed to recovering its packaging, seeking to reuse materials in addition to conferring with consumers over the best sustainable practices for packaging.

With Mattel's recent big comeback into the cultural mainstream, the importance of its sustainability commitments will only grow.

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