Lego Struggles to Find a Plant-Based Plastic That Clicks

[cosmodisk]

I appreciate the initiative, however even without it, Lego isn't something that gets thrown away after a few months use,if at all.

[extropy]

Hmm I'm not following. This is about moving away from oil dependance, not making bricks bio degenerable.

[benologist]

Even if you keep it for decades it's got millennia left to be someone else's trash and landfill, so it's still worth substituting something that biodegrades.

[tonyedgecombe]

My parents still have Lego from my childhood in the loft. The only parts that have degraded are electrical.

I’m not sure what we will do with it when they pass, it has little or no value.

Perhaps it would make sense to recycle it.

[Hedja]

What do you base that on? Lego has plenty of small individual sets that get played with by kids, broken apart, bits go missing and eventually they get binned.

[magic_beans]

That's very anecdotal. Just because you might have been attached to Legos, doesn't mean everyone is.

[zubspace]

The first lego sets I had are still great. They are more basic and allow more open play than the current sets in my opinion.

The lego pieces today feel a bit better and are easier to connect and pull apart. But I do not like the way Legos transitioned into Collector-Pieces/Merchandizing toys. There's just too much of it and most of them limit your fantasy.

[toper-centage]

Yes, but little pieces end up inevitably lost. And for a company as big as Lego, it becomes a moral responsibility to look for solutions - even if each customer only loses one tiny block per year, that's millions of little indestructible plastic pieces. But it would be ideal if they would biodegrade in certain conditions like after 20 years under the sea.

[jacquesm]

The whole power of Lego is that it is a heirloom toy, it stays in the family. In mine now for three generations and likely more to come.

[desuyone]

I don't really get the point, if you make bio plastic that lasts as long as normal plastic then won't it have the same effect on our plastic waste problem. Also, it is not like taking some oil out of the earth together with the tons of oil that are taken out for fuel (probably from a thickness that isn't really used for much else) will have a worse effects on our environment than clearing out enormous pieces of land to grow all these plants.

[tracker1]

I think there's actually a few reasons why they are investing.

1) it makes them look like they care about green earth stuff, not saying they don't, but the marketing image is priceless.

2) it's potentially valuable IP that can be licensed to other companies, even where it doesn't work for lego, it might be a great fit more broadly.

3) Having it wear down more quickly means more responsible waste, also it ensures the product may instead of lasting decades, only last a few years.

4) Eventually crude oil will run out, and even before that will get much more costly to use as source material.

[specialist]

If they create a suitable plastic substitute, they'll make a mint off the technology alone.

[byron_fast]

I doubt their customers care. They should make things their customers care about.

[FredDollen]

It's more about virtue signaling