Mattel Plays Responsibly With “Design It, Make It, Live It” Sustainability Strategy

Mattel, Inc. today announced how the company continues to play responsibly with its “Design It, Make It, Live It” sustainability strategy, marking progress in many areas across the global organization to reduce impacts and instill a mindset of sustainability among its workforce.

“Mattel is a company that is focused on playing responsibly in all that we do, which includes how we impact the world around us,” said Lisa Marie Bongiovanni, vice president of corporate affairs at Mattel. “From the products we make to the people who make up our organization, the Mattel organization is always seeking ways for the company to improve and evolve, to actively make the world a better place to live and play.”

Mattel's sustainability strategy is focused on helping the company minimize its footprint throughout the value chain and across the organization, and emphasizes the importance of personal commitment in business as well as everyday practices and processes. First, by “designing it” with the end in mind, Mattel is focused on exploring opportunities for sustainability in the design of products and packaging; “making it” with eco-efficiencies that allows the company to identify opportunities to gain efficiencies and reduce environmental impacts through the manufacturing and distribution of its products; and by “living it” with the personal commitment that the company is fostering a culture of sustainability, which inspires employee-led grassroots initiatives.

Examples of Mattel’s sustainability progress include:

• Packaging Improvements: In an effort to reduce packaging materials, Mattel has reduced wire/twist ties by more than 90 percent across the company’s product lines. In addition, Mattel recently completed a life cycle assessment of packaging across multiple product lines to identify impacts and opportunities for future improvements.
• Resource Expeditions: Mattel continually seeks out ways to conserve energy and water across the organization, and has implemented employee-led resource expeditions that identify opportunities for improvements. To date, Mattel has conducted 16 global expeditions and identified more than 250 initiatives with a potential savings of 22 million kWh and nine million gallons of water, which is equivalent to removing 2,000 U.S. homes from the electricity grid for one year and 13 Olympic-sized swimming pools respectively.
• Composting: Mattel’s manufacturing facility in Monterrey, Mexico, opened one of the region’s largest composting facilities in May 2010. The composting facility handles more than 50 kgs of food scraps from the facility’s cafeteria, as well as materials including coffee waste, paper and hand towel waste. The composting facility diverted nearly 15.6 tonnes of waste from the local landfill during a 12-month period. Mattel also shares the compost by-product with the employees and the local community, for use in personal gardens.

Mattel also sees positive impacts that come out of the company’s rich corporate culture, including:

• Café Improvements: Mattel’s employee cafeterias at its El Segundo headquarters have also made tangible improvements in 2011, from buying locally-grown produce and improving recycling processes to decrease the use of non-recyclable materials by more than 42 percent.
• Daycare Composting and Organic Garden: Mattel parents who practice sustainability efforts at home brought a composting solution to the Mattel Child Development Center, located at the company’s El Segundo headquarters, educating the children of employees about sustainability. Preschoolers at the Center separate food scraps and feed the worms in the composting bin, and use the leachate from the composter in the Center’s organic vegetable garden, which the children also tend.

As part of Mattel’s sustainability efforts, the company will be hosting two important events this spring:

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