Lego has started producing some of its pieces from plant-based plastic – and having initially launched the experimental material for ‘green’ items such as trees and bushes, it is slowly scaling up its use of bioplastic to make up more of its box sets, with the aim to be fully sustainable by 2030.
Stories of decades-old pieces of Lego washing up on beaches are well known (largely attributed to a shipping container full of the product falling into the sea off the south west coast of England in 1997), and are often cited as examples of plastic’s longevity and its impact on the environment. The toy company, however, is now moving away from fossil-fuel-based plastic and towards a type of polyethylene derived from sugar cane.
Lego says as well as being more environmentally friendly than traditional plastic, the new material is just as durable and, although not completely biodegradable, can be recycled many times. The company has also pledged to make all of its packaging sustainable by 2025.
One sticking point (pun intended) is that Lego has yet to find a bioplastic capable of replicating the strength of its generic building bricks, which have to be stronger than the pieces in box sets due to their repeated use – but the company points out that this repeated use is in itself an environmentally friendly feature of the product.
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Lego has started producing some of its pieces from plant-based plastic – and having initially launched the experimental material for ‘green’ items such as trees and bushes, it is slowly scaling up its use of bioplastic to make up more of its box sets, with the aim to be fully sustainable by 2030.
Stories of decades-old pieces of Lego washing up on beaches are well known (largely attributed to a shipping container full of the product falling into the sea off the south west coast of England in 1997), and are often cited as examples of plastic’s longevity and its impact on the environment. The toy company, however, is now moving away from fossil-fuel-based plastic and towards a type of polyethylene derived from sugar cane.
Lego says as well as being more environmentally friendly than traditional plastic, the new material is just as durable and, although not completely biodegradable, can be recycled many times. The company has also pledged to make all of its packaging sustainable by 2025.
One sticking point (pun intended) is that Lego has yet to find a bioplastic capable of replicating the strength of its generic building bricks, which have to be stronger than the pieces in box sets due to their repeated use – but the company points out that this repeated use is in itself an environmentally friendly feature of the product.