If at first you don’t succeed, scrap your idea and wind up looking a little bit silly.
At least, that’s been the case with Lego, the Danish toymaker who crafts what are perhaps the world’s most famous toy building blocks. According to this, the company is scrapping its first go at making its iconic little bricks out of “sustainable” materials after it turns out swapping oil-based plastics for recycled materials would leave a bigger carbon footprint than just using the old stuff.
Right now, about 80% of the 120 billion Lego pieces sold around the world annually are made using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a type of plastic made from crude oil. The company launched a go-green effort to change this in 2020, and had originally said they planned to make all their Legos out of sustainable materials by 2023.
But after testing hundreds of options, Lego said it’s “just not possible” to find an environmentally friendly material that has the same quality, shine, and appeal as old-school Legos. And, in fact, making the bricks out of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (RPET) - the company’s first plan - would actually produce higher carbon emissions than just using oil-based plastic.
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"We tested hundreds and hundreds of materials. It's just not been possible to find a material like that," Lego Chief Executive Niels Christiansen told the Financial times.
Tim Brooks, Lego’s head of sustainability, explained that the company’s entire manufacturing process would have had to be overhauled to scale up the use of recycled PET, leading to greater carbon output.
“[The] level of disruption to the manufacturing environment was such that we needed to change everything in our factories. After all that, the carbon footprint would have been higher,” he said, adding, “It was disappointing.”
Despite the setback, the company said it will “remain fully committed to making Lego bricks from sustainable materials by 2032,” having already pledged $1.2 billion in R&D by 2025.
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