LEGO Group to Invest 1 Billion DKK to Search for Sustainable Materials

[Toys N Bricks]

The LEGO Group has announced today that they will invest 1 billion DKK (~$150 million USD) to search for sustainable materials for their building toys. A LEGO Sustainable Materials Centre will be established and will be located at LEGO's headquarters in Billund, Denmark. This centre will focus on the research and development of sustainable materials. Expected timeframe for the building is in 2015-2016 and more than 100 employees would be employed at this centre.

In the past LEGO has already worked on in being more sustainable such as reducing box sizes. Now, they'll be working on getting their materials sustainable by 2030. Way to go LEGO on being more environmentally friendly!

*Full press release can be found on LEGO.com.



Article Link: http://toysnbricks.com/lego-group-to-in ... materials/

[Brick & Blue]

Ummm... ok. Are they going to make bricks out of wood?

[Brickred]

That's a great start TLG! Time to reduce your massive carbon footprint. I think the current packaging can be further reduced, big sets usually have about 40% air space due to which instructions / sticker sheets are usually bend. Another item which is completely discarded into trash and eventually landfill is the numbered plastic bags, can those those be made into zip lock bags - that are at least reusable? Or can they be eliminated in favor of numbered cardboard boxes which are post consumer recycled content? And finally can the printing dyes be made more eco friendly? Instructions for smaller sets should only be digital, this can be achieved by encouraging builders to the Lego portal where they can unlock multiple alternate builds and also combine sets from a theme into a larger set, this will also create more digital engagement.

[slacker]

One of the reasons why some of the boxes are so large is because of marketing. If you pay $100 and the box is half the size, consumers will think they are not getting their monies worth.

VW's tail lens are made out of recyclable plastic i know for sure. But would lego lower prices of sets if they went that route?

[anakinisvader]

LEGO is already sustainable. I've been stepping on them for over 40 years.

[vynsane]

The plastic bags are recyclable, if your municipality accepts #4 plastic.

But it doesn't seem like they're primarily looking at the packaging and ancillary materials, but the actual material the bricks are made of - a replacement to ABS itself. If they could come up with a cost-effective synthetic plastic with the same properties as ABS, not only would it most likely cut their production budget (since they wouldn't need to subsidize the cost of the oil in the pellets they buy), but allow them to license the use of the synthetic to other companies and actually make money off of it.

[bea]

I hope they can do this while improving the durability of the bricks. I have experienced far, far too many cracked bricks in my new sets

[payam81]

That's a great start TLG! Time to reduce your massive carbon footprint. I think the current packaging can be further reduced, big sets usually have about 40% air space due to which instructions / sticker sheets are usually bend. Another item which is completely discarded into trash and eventually landfill is the numbered plastic bags, can those those be made into zip lock bags - that are at least reusable? Or can they be eliminated in favor of numbered cardboard boxes which are post consumer recycled content? And finally can the printing dyes be made more eco friendly? Instructions for smaller sets should only be digital, this can be achieved by encouraging builders to the Lego portal where they can unlock multiple alternate builds and also combine sets from a theme into a larger set, this will also create more digital engagement.

Thanks, but no thanks. Of all the waste in this world I think we can leave the paper manuals in Lego boxes alone. It's part of the experience and isn't particularly difficult to be made of sustainable sources.

[vynsane]

^ Not to mention that digital instruction booklets would require you to have internet access and a dedicated computer or tablet that a kid can use whenever they want to build - both of those things cost a fair deal more than one small LEGO set every year, which is all that some families out there can reasonably afford. By going digital that way, that family is now out of luck.

Again, this is more about LEGO being sustainable as a company than it is about the environment. Sure, if they come up with the right solutions, it will be mutually beneficial - but only if it cuts costs or increases profits for the company, which is the ultimate goal. A new form of synthetic plastic with a smaller carbon footprint that they can patent, or a new manufacturing process that's more efficient and environmentally friendly that they can then lease to other companies - these are the types of solutions they should be looking for.

[Richard J.]

VW's tail lens are made out of recyclable plastic i know for sure. But would lego lower prices of sets if they went that route?

They would probably have to raise prices. Recycling takes more energy and effort to produce usable materials than using the normal raw materials so the cost is inherently higher.

I wish people would get a grip on the environmental hysteria. Global warming alarmists have been predicting catastrophic events for decades without a single one coming true. For instance, it was predicted that in 2015 the world's population would have dropped to under 3 billion due to mass starvation caused by climate change. Additionally, due to melting Arctic ice, New York City and many other coastal regions were going to be under water. Not to mention that in the 1980s the prediction was a new ice age caused by global cooling which clearly isn't even close to happening.

Obviously none of that happened.

Further, the geologic evidence is that the Earth was hotter in the past before human industry took off than it is now.

It's great to want to cut waste and limit pollution. That is an admirable goal and there is a tremendous amount of waste that can be cut. Though some of it is government mandated! Packaging laws can be ridiculous.

I just hope Lego Group isn't acting out of sociopolitical philosophy instead of cold business logic. I do not want to see another near bankruptcy for them. Sustainable projects have a nasty tendency to devour money with little to nothing to show for it. The saddest failures to me have been solar projects. Unlimited clean cheap energy from the sun would be ideal and vastly reduce pollution. Sadly, no one seems interested in investing the resources into an orbital solar power array system. Such a system combined with an orbital elevator would allow for not only constant and unlimited clean energy but the gathering of minerals from lifeless space rocks instead of the living planet we're on. The initial costs would be high but properly developed the technology would have incredible potential to allow for environmentally friendly resource gathering and deep space exploration and colonization.

[tensor]

This has nothing to do with being environmentally friendly, it's all about finding ways to continue to make their plastic bricks. Oil isn't forever.