Lego has abandoned plans to create its bricks from recycled bottles, a setback to the company’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
In 2021, the company stated that it expected to make oil-free bricks within two years.
However, it announced on Monday that it had discovered that utilizing the new material did not lower carbon emissions.
Lego stated that it is “fully committed” to producing sustainable bricks.
Lego produces around 4,400 different bricks. Many of them are currently produced from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a virgin plastic derived from crude oil.
The move, originally reported by the Financial Times, may be viewed as a setback following Lego’s high-profile drive to strengthen its green credentials.
As sustainability becomes more important to customers, Lego, like many other corporations, has been researching alternate materials to plastic.
Finding a material that is sturdy enough to last for generations has been one of the challenges.
It announced in 2021 that it has created prototype bricks out of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles with various other chemicals included.
It was hoped that the substance would provide an alternative to oil-based bricks.
However, after more than two years of testing, Lego has revealed that using recycled PET does not lower carbon emissions.
It stated that this was due to the extra processes necessary in the manufacturing process, which consumed more energy.
As a result, it stated that it has “decided not to progress” with the production of bricks from the substance.
It stated that it was testing and manufacturing bricks manufactured from “a variety of alternative sustainable materials.”
Lego CEO Niels Christiansen told the Financial Times that there was no “magic material” that could solve the company’s sustainability issues.
“We tested literally hundreds of materials.” “It’s simply not possible to find a material like that,” he explained.
“We remain fully committed to making Lego bricks from sustainable materials by 2032,” a company spokeswoman told the BBC.
“We are investing more than $1.2bn 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% by 2032.”
