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Lego Wants To Completely Remake Its Toy Bricks Using Plant-Based Or Recycled Materials (seattletimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Seattle Times: Lego is trying to refashion the product it is best known for: It wants to eliminate its dependence on petroleum-based plastics, and build its toys entirely from plant-based or recycled materials by 2030. The challenge is designing blocks that click together yet separate easily, retain bright colors, and survive the rigors of being put through a laundry load, or the weight of an unknowing parent's foot. In essence, the company wants to switch the ingredients, but keep the product exactly the same. [...] Lego emits about 1 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, about three-quarters of which comes from the raw materials that go into its factories, according to Tim Brooks, the company's vice president for environmental responsibility. Lego is taking a two-pronged approach to reducing the amount of pollution it causes. For one, it wants to keep all of its packaging out of landfills by 2025 by eliminating things like plastic bags inside its cardboard packaging. It is also pushing for the plastic in its toys to come from sources like plant fibers or recycled bottles by 2030. The billion-dollar company is reportedly investing about $120 million and hiring about 100 people to make these changes possible. "Lego is already using polyethylene made from sugar-cane husks in flexible pieces like dragon wings, palm trees and fishing rods, but these constitute only 1 to 2 percent of its output, and the material is too soft for the company's toy blocks," reports The Seattle Times. Lego has already experimented with around 200 alternatives, but most of the materials have so far fallen short.
So we can eat them.
Fuck you Lego! You are finally admitting that the years of pain you put us through was totally intentional to the extend you actually test it to make sure! Fuck you Lego!
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/08/lego-built-a-life-size-drivable-bugatti-chiron-out-of-technic-pieces/
Why bother doing that. Legos are probably a half decent way of sequestering carbon. The oil that they don't lock up into tiny plastic bricks is just going to go into some asshole's Hummer. Legos are so expensive now (and the old sets are worth a good amount as collectors items) that no one with half a brain is going to throw them out as trash. They just get passed on to your own kids or nieces and nephews.
Sure, make the packaging better for the environment because that's going to get tossed, but the bricks themselves could stay as they are. The recycled plastic idea isn't bad. There's probably enough in the Pacific garbage patch for the next several thousand years. However, unless we get some breakthroughs in regards to plant fibers, they'll just end up with something that degrades and ends up getting thrown out and needs replacement, which is probably worse from an energy use perspective (but not so bad as a business model) than making something that will still be getting inadvertently sucked up by vacuums on judgement day.
I remember an old toy block system almost identical, dimensions were the same, to Lego blocks but they were notably softer plastic. They were still plenty tough but quite a few blocks had my teeth marks left in them.
I liked those blocks more, even as a kid, because they didn't hurt your foot as much when stood on.
Instead of abandoning ABS completely, I think it is about time to consider expanding the recycling of existing ABS to include not just packaging but also products themselves. Would that be feasible?
Everyone of us has quite a large number of items made from ABS. It is very common in electronics for instance. Just looking around me, my keyboard, mouse and monitor bezel in front of me are made of ABS.
Electronics should be recycled, and their enclosures are probably recycled with the rest but not all plastic enclosures have a resin identification code so that the type of plastic could be determined easily when recycled.
One challenge could be that ABS comes in many different variations, with varying proprtions of A (acrylonitrile), B (butadiene) and S (polystyrene), plus additives for UV-resistance or flame retardants.
ABS is such a versatile, wonderful material. I think we should treat it as such.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
It saves the environment, and you get to replace it every 5 years. Swell!
Make them soluble so they can be absorbed when embedded in a parent's foot.
Ahem, it's called young republicanism you intolerant deadbeat hippie.
Somehow I get the feeling "exactly" is going to have quite the wide margin to it. Don't get me wrong it would be great if they could come up with a perfect replacement, but that's not how these things usually turn out. There's going to be something about them that makes the current ones just a little better. Invest in classic bricks now!
As an aside, just found out there's a Legoland NY coming in 2020, heck yeah! There's already a Discovery Center, but for some reason nobody will lend me a kid so I can get in. Maybe I should just borrow one with asking and leave a note... better to ask forgiveness than permission right?
Hmm!
This "tech is bad, let's get back to basics for the sake of the children" is nothing new. It was the philosophy that programmed the children of the German Adolf Hitler inherited- and now as then the military industrial complex pushes ahead with extreme war spending while having the state propagandists sell 'anti-tech' nonsense to the sheeple (and the dribbling chattering classes, like you peeps here).
Ban plastic straws, ban plastic bags, while the politicians that lean on this nonsense vote for the largest military budgets seen in Human History, follows the most ancient pattern of pseudo-democracy manipulation. People who read Plato's Republic for the first time cannot get over how familiar the 2500 year old description of the fatal flaws of 'democracy' sounds in the light of current events.
Corporations like Lego do what the corporations of the 1930s did.
In the UK, the message is that only the STATE can be trusted to look after the interests of the children of Britain, again a message all to familiar to anyone who has studied Germany in the years leading to WW2.
Live and let live doesn't suit the warmongers. "Your neighbour is an irresponsible monster" most certainly does.
Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen were all decent SECULAR nations with an islamic tradition. The "ban plastics' brigade are the self same team who have targeted for utter destruction each secular regime in the Middle East, on behalf of the demonic siamese states of Saudi Arabia and Is-ael. The "ban plastics" team literally promote the wahhabi horrors as the ideal for Humanity in islamic lands.
Thinking people MUST look at all the messages coming from the mouths of organised mass murdering monsters. Each of these messages will be crafted to serve the SAME purpose. To make it really easy, look at the agenda of the worst living war criminal, Tony Blair (and the blairite movements that control all aspects of British society today). If Blair promotes it it is either pure evil or a lie designed to servge pure evil.
I understand that most of you reading this are too thick to process the psychology of effective propaganda. Which is why effective propganda methods are effective. But this is why people like you must take the obvious approach- to identify the war mongers and reject ALL of their messages. But the left today embraces the war mongers. And you dribblers think the neo-liberal leaders of the 'left', like Clinton, can be trusted to do the thinking for you.
Remember, Trump ran on an anti-war ticket and Clinton on a pro-war ticket. For sure Trump has been turned around- but every person voting for Clinton was voting to murder and hurt millions of more gays and women in her never ending wars of wahhabi and z-onist atrocity. That is how much the traditional left stinks today. When Clinton murders a nation like Libya or Syria, she hurts ALL the peoiple within that nation. Obama was responsible for a million times more atrocity than Idi Amin. Do you fake lefties tell you kids this fact?
And the people that manipulate you fake lefties with this plastic substitute Lego brick nonsense or the like are the same old demons that have walked the Human Race into so many wars during Man's history. War is rarely sold to the masses with the message "wouldn't it be cool to go rape and massacre our helpless neighbours". No, the excuse for war is always something dribblers like YOU will buy at the time.
They can use the really ass like smelling plastic the chinese have been using. It's like an ass factory was merged into a brick of ABS and then molded into the bargain basement shit they sent to my door step.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
the cellulose acetate used in the original lego bricks sucked (by today's abs standards) for tolerances and durability.
they have 12 years to find something else. unless some significant new breakthrough happens, i don't see them coming up with something as good as the abs they use currently.
lego's insane quality control and minuscule tolerances is why they are so good and last forever and that's where their high pressure injection molded abs shines.
Lego should get with Monsanto and genetically engineer Lego plants that are immune to roundup, edible, too, that would be nice, perfect for kids who want to play with their food.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
There's NO NEED to make Lego bricks "recyclable", because there's no fucking need TO recycle them... they can be reused as-is. Seriously, I can take a box of Lego bricks from when I was a small child decades ago, and they interoperate perfectly well with a brand new box of Lego bricks purchased now.
It's like hand-wringing about an IBM Model M keyboard being "non-recyclable" -- it's an utterly moot point, because they're still useful today, practically indestructible, and even if damaged, you can almost always take 20 "broken" Model M keyboards and end up with 17-19 working ones after cannibalizing one or two of them for spare parts.
If anything, Lego is worried that TOO FEW Lego bricks end up in landfills, and TOO MANY end up getting passed on to the next generation. Eventually, thanks to exponential growth, we'll end up in a period where newborns end up inheriting a half-million Lego bricks that belonged to their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, and have NO NEED for more. Lego has to find some way to make them NOT last forever so that won't happen.
I'm not even sure if this is a good idea (I like an earlier post about how legos sequester carbon) but if it is, why not get started with a meaningful metric that will be achieved in the next 2-3 years? Oh, that's right, because that involves a lot of difficult work, and doesn't generate the nice press releases as predictably.
I seriously want to start a website like "all of the future promises and predictions that people made" where I mirror the promise, store it locally, and then check up on it like 12 years later to see if they kept their promise or if they kept shifting it backwards as a cool announcement since everyone forgot the earlier cool announcement.
Lego is awesome, and I think this is the FIRST promise I've heard them make like this. I think the State of California, and the European democracies, are the worst about pledging to be off carbon/nukes/diesel/crack in the next 15/20/25 years.
When I buy a majority stake in Lego I will immediately remove two positions in the company: this environmental responsibility specialist and the other one in charge for hiring women, ethnic minorities, and promoting LGBT. This will be good both for the environment (no carbon emitted inventing silly ideas) and the diversity (can hire a hard-working man instead of a white collar worker).
”The challenge is designing blocks that ... survive the ... weight of an unknowing parent's foot.”
That company is definitely run by a bunch of sadistic bastards. I suspected as much back when my daughter was young - but now I have proof.
#DeleteChrome
... that's no problem, it beats fastfood.
Bach says it all.
That was a way to sell in shittier products by claiming that stuff that didn't break and lasted a lifetime was somehow flawed. Now we are starting to make things that rot if exposed to moisture and crumbles if exposed to UV rays and that is somehow sold as a "good thing". I guess Lego looked at all the cars that rust away in just 10-15 years thanks to unnecessary salt on the roads and got jealous.
I can hear the board meeting banter now: "We should make people buy new Legos every ten years. As it is now they last forever, its one of the last heirloom products that regular people can afford. That limits our potential profit!"
I want Legos that cause more injury to parents and their feet. Children need a way to protect themselves by building a wall, of sorts. And they're going to make their parents pay for it. Don't get me started on their ideas. They're not bringing ice cream, but groundings and chores. Is that what we want? #makelegogreatagain
Well, that is a very thoughtful response to the issue, but the actual amount of carbon that is sequestered is small compared to the amount of energy that is used in extraction and transportation before the crude is even turned into bricks. There is some research I saw that was published online a few years ago (perhaps an academic paper?), where the energy budget of Lego sets were studied. I wish I could find the link for that paper, it was really interesting.
Anyway, the best way to reduce Co2 isn't to dig it up and sequester it, it is to not dig it up in the first place. I think Lego is doing the right thing in trying to reduce the demand to dig up petrochemicals.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
When using virgin polymer, the material is exactly the same batch after batch. You just can't do that with recycled plastics because every skip load is a variable mix.
Recyclers work hard to mitigate this by working in large batches (typically about 20 tonne) and assessing/grading the results. But it's not perfect, and subtle changes in the material can cause manufacturing problems. Constantly adjusting the process settings to compensate is not what you want, though we may be heading to a stage where machine learning is smart enough to assess products as they come off the line and automatically make adjustments.
The other big issue with recycled material is that's it's rarely clean white, so difficult to colour. Most is mixed colour ("jazz" as it's called) which is run to black. This might explain why they're looking at drinks bottles. There's a lot of clear PET on the market, it's an on-going resource, and it's cheap. However, it is very tricky to injection mould due to crystallinity issues. There are certain additives that help, but they're expensive.
Most PET is currently reused as polyester fibre, though a little goes back into bottles. (Not that much due to contamination issues. They can't actually solve that, so they keep lowering the regulations instead to allow more to be used.)
Plant-based polymers are a long way from being cost effective at the moment.
Why not make the bricks from Bamboo? To hell with the colors, use your imagination!
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Why the virtue signaling? Just make the blocks and STFU about it. Everyone can see what they are doing. Notice us! We're so good! We're getting out front of the eventual boycott of our carbon based product
Polylactide (PLA) is very common in the 3D printer market. It's easy to print with and biodegrades.
The problem is the biodegrade part. Things made with it don't last very long and if you leave them in the sun they deform/melt. I assume maybe Lego WANTS this so you have to buy more overpriced plastic.
Strong enough for car parts (Henry Ford demonstrated that with a sledge hammer).
Plus, it's a damn weed. It will grow in almost any soil, takes little water, and regrows quickly after harvesting.
It's the oldest agricultural crop for textiles in history for a reason--many uses besides cloth. (The word "Canvas" literally refers to the genus of the plant--cannibus/canvas).
Lego blocks are made from ABS, and there is plenty of it in our garbage:
Almost everything on the outside of printers.
Computer accessories: charger and keyboard housing, monitor parts, those crappy computer speaker enclosures.
Many parts in a car interiors. If a plastic part isn't soft in a car, it's likely plastic.
The outside of many laptop computers
The outside of many kitchen appliances: blenders, mixers.
Housewares, outlet plates, bathroom accessories,
and many others.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
How about making them cheaper.. Lego cost way more than they are worth....
Shitty legos, just what we need. Goodbye LEGO, do this and youâ(TM)ll be out of business in no time
Where do they think oil comes from? it's already plant-based