The Lego Group has abandoned plans to make its bricks from recycled plastic as using the new sustainable material does not reduce carbon emissions.
The company’s prototype Lego brick using PET plastic from old bottles was announced in 2021. However, Lego has now said that after more than two years of testing, using the material instead of oil-based plastic would have a higher carbon footprint.
The move was first reported in the the Financial Times. “It’s like trying to make a bike out of wood rather than steel,” Lego’s head of sustainability Tom Brooks told the publication.
“In order to scale production, 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. It was disappointing.”
Niels Christiansen, chief executive of Lego, told the FT: “We tested hundreds and hundreds of materials. It’s just not been possible to find a material like that.”
A spokesperson for the company told the BBC: “We remain fully committed to making Lego bricks from sustainable materials by 2032.
“We are investing more than $1.2 billion in sustainability initiatives in the four years to 2025 as part of our efforts to transition to more sustainable materials and reduce our carbon emissions by 37 percent by 2032.”
Lego investing in sustainability
Despite ditching plans to make bricks from recycled plastic, the Lego Group has appointed Annette Stube as its chief sustainability officer.
“While we have made significant progress over the past few years to reduce the impact our business has on the planet, we have much more to do,” said Christiansen.
“We have set ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions, make our products and packaging more sustainable and circular, and run zero impact operations.”
Images courtesy of the Lego Group
