Lego’s Greener Future of Play
Lego is probably one of the most beloved toy brands of our times, cherished by kids and adults alike. Starting from a simple but innovative patent — Lego building bricks — the company’s pallet of products has diversified to an incredible scale. We can’t help but be amazed before all the small-scale wonders that the Danish-based company produces, and they produce a lot of them — about 19 billion Lego elements are produced every year.
When looking at colorful Lego bricks of numerous shapes and sizes, it is somewhat hard to imagine that these joyful little objects all originate from oil.
We tend to forget that most of the plastic that is produced today comes from fossil fuels and its byproducts. That is the reason why the charming plastic bricks have been one of the guilty pleasures of many sustainably-oriented consumers.
In recent years, Lego has become seriously dedicated to lessening its impact on the global environment. For example, Lego has invested significant funds in offshore turbines, resulting in an impressive result — all Lego facilities are now powered by renewable energy.
However, the main Lego products — their bricks and sets — are still made entirely out of plastic, and we know how bad plastic is for our planet, from beginning to the end of its life cycle. Lego utilises 20 different types of plastic, and all have been sourced from fossil fuels — up until now.
Sugarcane-Powered Botanical Elements
To target that central issue, last month the company announced that the first Lego plastic parts made out of bio-based plastic will hit the market later this year. For its first renewable material, Lego picked polyethylene (PE) sourced from sugarcane.
The bioplastic parts will compromise 1–2% of the overall Lego production. That is almost a symbolic percentage, but it means that at least 190 million elements will be made from green polyethylene.
Sugarcane bioplastic will be the new substance of choice for moulding trees, bushes and other vegetation in Lego City sets, as well as some other softer parts like car wash brushes.
Lego chose to make bio-sourced plant elements, not only because of the symbolics. All the parts that are now sugarcane-sourced are by design softer, more elastic and feature a matte finish — just remember how a Lego pine tree looks and feels. Plant-based polyethylene can deliver those qualities, but, as we will shortly see, would be faulty in other Lego roles.
What is sugarcane bio-polyethylene exactly?
Bio-polyethylene, also known as renewable polyethylene, or green polyethylene (Green PE) is a plastic material that is produced mostly from sugarcane. It is estimated that green PE sequesters roughly 2,15 tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of bio-polyethylene produced. This takes place mainly through the CO2 absorption of the growing sugarcane.
Plant matter is turned into plastic via ethanol dehydration, a process known since 1920s. Ethanol is produced from sugarcane, then dehydrated into ethylene, which is turned into polyethylene in the final stage of production. With the recent expansion of renewable materials and a bigger scale of production, bio-PE has finally become commercially competitive with regular, oil-based PE.
Of course, renewable polyethylene is far from perfect.
The final product still has the same properties as regular plastic. While this is good in a technological sense, since sugarcane polyethylene is of equal quality as its fossil fuel counterpart and both can be recycled together, the similarity also means it is not biodegradable and suffers from same risks as regular plastic, including pollution and adverse effects on human and animal health. Also, increased sugarcane production carries risks of deforestation and utilisation of land otherwise suitable for food production.
Although PE certainly has faults, using an already existing and widely available renewable material is a good ice-breaker for companies like Lego since it enables them go from research phase to the commercial product at a relatively fast pace.
However, the story is not as simple as “Lego has gone green, the end”. Lego’s example is a good illustration how it looks like when big companies try to take a turn towards sustainability in a world that is falling behind regarding the environmental protection.
Why can’t Lego completely switch to bio-based plastics now they made it this far?
ABS Plastic Blues
Out of the earlier-mentioned 20 types of plastic, 80% of Lego elements are made from just one of them. It is the Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene. ABS is a thermoplastic emulsion consisting of three components — it “combines the strength and rigidity of acrylonitrile and styrene polymers with the toughness of polybutadiene rubber”, as Brickapedia puts it. ABS is very hard and rigid, which ensures that bricks will hold shape, and that will hold on to each other well. ABS is also responsible for the trademark gloss of many Lego elements.
Superior hardness, rigidity and gloss make ABS a perfect material for toys from a technical point of view, but producing it has a significant environmental impact. ABS is derived from natural gas and petroleum; additionally, production of 1 kg (2.2 lb) of ABS resin in Europe uses about of 26.48 kW⋅h (95.34 MJ) of power. Also, it is not recycled as much as other types of plastic.
To make things more challenging for Lego and other responsible companies, no renewably-sourced material that would match the properties of ABS exists today.
Is the Future of Lego Green?
Lego is hoping for the source material technology to evolve until 2030, which is the year the company has set as a deadline to switch to a completely sustainable production process.
While searching and investing in finding the new, green main material, Lego will seek to replace other, less unique types of oil-based materials. There is still time for ground-breaking research, as well as for improvement of existing practices. For example, lignin-based ABS with a durable tree molecule lignin replacing one of the petroleum components, is showing good results in the lab.
On the other hand, material technology doesn’t solve the issue of the end of Lego product life cycle. Plastic is still plastic. However, Lego bricks are certainly not a major pollution problem since there is a global market for used and vintage Lego sets. Also, it is always nice to put a smile on a child’s face by gifting or donating your old sets.
The name of the company — LEGO — comes from Danish phrase “LEg GOdt”, which means “play well”. Let us hope that Lego will continue to push for innovation to ensure the wellness of play also includes the wellness of our Earth.
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