Lego has abandoned plans to switch to bricks made from recycled plastic

The world’s largest toy maker, the Lego Group, has abandoned its plan to make environmentally friendly bricks from recycled plastic bottles. The head of the company, Nils Christiansen, talks about this reported in an interview with the Financial Times.

Switching to cubes made from recycled plastic was perhaps the company’s most ambitious project in its attempt to make its production and its products more environmentally friendly. He was presented in June 2021 and expected that from 2030 all Lego bricks would be made from recycled plastic. Currently, 80% of cubes are made from less safe ABS plastic.

According to Mr. Christiansen, the company was forced to abandon its plans by expert research that showed that the production of new cubes would emit even more greenhouse gases than the production of current ones, due to the need to replace equipment and production features. The head of the company’s sustainable development department, Tim Brooks, also spoke to the newspaper about his disappointment. “To increase the production (of recycled plastic cubes.— “Kommersant”) the level of production disruption would be such that we would have to replace absolutely everything in our factories. And after that the carbon footprint would be higher,” he noted.

Victor Buk