Lego has suffered a setback in its search for an environmentally friendly raw material for its plastic building blocks. However, the Danish toy manufacturer is sticking to its sustainability goal.
Lego has been looking for alternative raw materials for its petroleum-based plastic building blocks for years. Now the Danish toy manufacturer has suffered a setback.
CO2 emissions not reduced
After more than two years of testing with recycled plastic bottles, it was determined that this material could not reduce carbon emissions, Lego said. The company is therefore abandoning this project, but is sticking to the goal of producing Lego bricks from renewable materials by 2032.
The research project was intended to examine whether the stones could in future be made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which does not lose quality when recycled.
“Hundreds of materials tested”
The toy maker says it plans to spend more than $1.2 billion by 2025 on initiatives to produce more sustainably and reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 37 percent by 2032. But there is no such thing as a “magic material,” Lego boss Niels Christiansen told the Financial Times. “We tested hundreds and hundreds of materials. It was simply not possible to find a material like this.”
However, tests with a range of environmentally friendly materials are continuing, the company said. These include recycled plastics and plastics from alternative sources such as e-methanol. This is obtained from carbon dioxide and hydrogen, which are created by splitting water molecules using renewable energies.
The company is already using an alternative raw material with bio-polypropylene, the sustainable and organic variant of polyethylene. It is used in parts of Lego sets such as leaves and trees. “We believe that in the long term this will promote the production of sustainable raw materials such as recycled oils and support our transition to sustainable materials,” the company said.