I have played with Lego bricks all my childhood, something that sparked my curiosity and inventivity. But as they are made of oil, and the age of oil is going to an close. Plus climate change urges to act. So what to do ?
Fast co-exist explains that :
Around three-quarters of Lego’s carbon footprint comes from the extraction and refinement of oil used in its toys. So even though the company has other environmental projects—like investing in a wind farm to offset the energy used in factories, and using FSC-certified cardboard for toy boxes—it realized that it couldn’t make real progress without looking at plastic itself.
Knowing this, the Danish company had to do something big, and fast :
Three years ago, it set the goal of finding a sustainable alternative by 2030, and quickly realized that the project would be a major challenge. “If we want to reach our ambition by 2030, we need to invest a significant amount of money,” says Trangbaek.
The company is pouring 1 billion Danish krone, or around $150 million, into a new sustainable materials center that will open in 2016 and plans to add another 100 employees focused specifically on finding new materials for their toys and packaging.
The classic bricks will likely still look and feel exactly the same when the company makes the shift; the material will still be plastic, just something that’s not made from oil.
The company is also recycling its own bricks :
“Last year, we recycled the equivalent of around 70 million Lego bricks,” he says. “But we can do that within our factories because we can ensure the product is still in a pristine condition. We can’t compromise on the product quality or product safety—that means we know exactly what material we’re using and what’s inside of it. The challenge with recycled materials from outside is that we don’t know the ingredients.”
Overall, I believe we can all applaud the company’s commitment which is another great example of Corporate Social Responsibility and how Businesses are already working at a post-oil world.