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.

Comments

Re:Recycling ABS on a larger scale

[blindseer]

Part of the problem is that is costs more to recycle plastic than it does to simply manufacture new plastic. Otherwise there would already be a market for non-subsidized plastic, the way there is a market for aluminum and scrap steel. Also, since most of the cost for recycling is energy, and most off that energy comes from fossil fuels, you aren't really saving anything by recycling plastic (challenge: for anyone who says use renewable energy, calculate the carbon footprint of a solar panel, nuclear power plant, or windmill, plus add the added carbon necessary in economic activity to pay for its higher cost).

I had a chemistry professor comment in one of his lectures that recycling plastics is stupid. People should just burn them. I recall he mentioned this because at the time there was a debate on building a waste burning power plant in the area.

When it comes to doing the calculations you ask, it appears someone did do that.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

If someone is going to look for an energy source to recycle this plastic, synthesize it, reduce it to it's constituent elements, or whatever you wish to do to lower the carbon emitted, then look closely at nuclear power. Nuclear power is low carbon, safe, and just generally a good idea. If someone wants to raise issues of the waste problem then I'll just say that it appears that any problems on the safety of the waste was included in those calculations. The author, Dr. Ripu Malhotra, also made a powerpoint presentation where he points out that next generation nuclear will consume much of the existing waste.
https://drive.google.com/file/...

When it comes to replacing petroleum based transportation fuel, and presumably also petroleum based feedstock for making Lego blocks, there's the US Navy program on developing a hydrocarbon synthesis device. A device that they intend to power with nuclear reactors.
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-...

One complaint I keep hearing is the costs of nuclear power. Well, a single reactor does cost a lot of money but it produces lots of energy, it will produce energy at a cost that's at least competitive with any source available today. We know this because of past performance. There's a lot of room for improvement with economies of scale and, in the USA at least, there is sufficient demand to allow for this economy of scale. The US government expects to see 20 GW of new natural gas electrical generation capacity this year. A typical nuclear power reactor produces 1 GW of electrical capacity. We could build a new nuclear reactor every month and still need to build more electrical generation capacity from natural gas, wind, or whatever, to keep up with demand. The USA saw reactors being built at this rate once before and there's no reason to expect we can't do it again. This is especially true given the much greater material needs for the alternatives like wind and solar.