Lego plans to switch oil-based bricks with renewable plastic as earnings soar

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Lego is ditching fossil fuels for a extra planet-friendly materials. 

This week, the toy maker introduced it was eliminating using oil in its bricks and changing it with renewable supplies and recycled plastic. 

The corporate will accomplish that by reducing the proportion of oil in its bricks whereas including extra licensed renewable or recycled supplies. After all, the bricks that make up Hagrid’s Hut, the Depraved Set, and Fortnite Battle Buses will value extra to supply. The corporate says it is going to be paying as much as 70% extra for the brand new materials, an authorized renewable resin. “This implies a major enhance in the price of producing a Lego brick,” CEO Niels Christiansen advised Reuters. 

However that doesn’t imply Lego units will value extra to purchase. “With a household proprietor dedicated to sustainability, it’s a privilege that we will pay further for the uncooked supplies with out having to cost clients further,” Christiansen added.

The corporate had earlier plans to make use of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for its basic constructing blocks; nonetheless, it quickly realized that utilizing it might produce much more air pollution than the present materials. 

“After greater than three years of testing, we discovered the fabric didn’t cut back carbon emissions,” a spokesperson advised CNN in 2023, including that the model is “not abandoning [its] effort to make oil-free bricks” and stays “totally dedicated to creating Lego bricks from sustainable supplies by 2032.”

Lego ended up testing greater than 600 supplies over the previous few years. Lastly, the corporate says new offers with producers of the brand new Lego-manufacturing materials have it on observe to ditch fossil fuels utterly by its aim date of 2032. 

Lego’s path towards sustainability has been difficult, which appears to underscore simply how a lot of a problem environmental shifts might be for the foremost toy makers of the world who’ve relied on low-cost plastic for many years. Discovering a cloth that works nicely to create a product of equal high quality whereas additionally not harming the planet just isn’t a straightforward feat, however Lego is something if not revolutionary. 

Whereas some newer toy makers are dedicated to environmentally pleasant toys, like Inexperienced Toys, that are produced from 100% recycled supplies, different basic toy makers are aiming to maneuver away from oil-based plastics, as nicely. Barbie maker, Mattel, has pledged to ditch plastic for recycled, recyclable, or bio-plastic materials by 2030 and convey down plastic packaging by 25% (by 2030). 

It’s onerous to think about a less-plastic model of Barbie, however as fossil gasoline emissions proceed to drive local weather change, toy makers know they merely must evolve. Barbie by Barbie . . . brick by brick.

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Sarah Bregel
2024-08-30 20:30:00
Source :https://www.fastcompany.com/91182536/lego-plans-to-replace-oil-based-bricks-with-renewable-plastic-as-profits-soar