- Lego drops recycled bottle plan.
- Testing alternative materials.
- Sustainability commitment remains.
In a blow to its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, toy behemoth Lego has abandoned plans to manufacture its bricks from recycled bottles.
The company stated in 2021 that it intended to produce non-oil-based bricks within two years.
However, the company announced on Monday that the novel material did not reduce carbon emissions.
Lego stated that it remains “fully committed” to manufacturing bricks from sustainable materials.
Lego produces approximately 4,400 unique blocks. Many of them are currently manufactured with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a virgin plastic derived from petroleum oil.
The move, which was first reported by the Financial Times, will be perceived as a setback following Lego’s high-profile campaign to enhance its ecological credentials.
Lego, like many other companies, has investigated alternatives to plastic as the importance of sustainability to consumers grows.
Finding a material durable enough to last for generations has been one of the difficulties.
It said in 2021 that it has developed PET bottle prototype blocks with different chemicals.
It was hoped that this material could provide an alternative to oil-based masonry.
However, after more than two years of testing, Lego has determined that using recycled PET does not reduce carbon emissions.
This was because the production process required additional stages, necessitating the use of more energy.
As a consequence, the company stated that it has “decided not to proceed” with brick production using the material.
According to the company, it is presently testing and developing bricks made from “a variety of alternative sustainable materials.”
Niels Christiansen, CEO of Lego, told the Financial Times that there was no “magical material” that could address the company’s sustainability issues.
“We tested thousands upon thousands of materials. It has been impossible to locate such a substance,” he stated.
A company representative stated, “We remain committed to producing Lego bricks from sustainable materials by 2032.”
As part of our efforts to transition to more sustainable materials and reduce our carbon emissions by 37% by 2032, we will invest more than $1.2 billion in sustainability initiatives between now and 2025.
