One of the principles and guiding words for The LEGO Group’s future direction with regards to its business is “sustainability”. From the energy used to run their infrastructure, to the very material they use in their LEGO bricks and other related products, the company’s working to make using sustainable sources their watchword. With regards to sustainable materials, LEGO has made a significant inroad with their special set Plants from Plants (40320), using plant-derived plastics rather than petroleum-based. The LEGO Group has deemed it successful enough to announce steps towards a full implementation of eco-friendly, sustainable plastic materials, across their products by the year 2030.
The LEGO Group is well aware that their factories around the world have an annual carbon dioxide emission of a million ton, coming from raw materials used in production like petroleum plastics. Seeing how sustainable plastic materials worked for a single set, the company has begun hiring more people to do further research on plastic-alternatives, with investments worth 1 billion kroner (over $100 million).
“We need to learn again how to do this,” remarked LEGO production supervisor Henrik Ostergaard Nielson, from the company’s main product factory in Billund, Denmark. As long as the new sustainable materials result in LEGO pieces that connect snugly yet separate easily, it’s all good.
Already, the LEGO Group has been pleased at meeting some of its sustainability targets, such as the pledge to utilize renewable energy in their factories, reached last year while the goal was for 2020. Let’s see how they go about a wider use of sustainable plastic materials in the future.
Source: Evening Standard UK