Lego abandons recycled plastic bottle bricks -.

Lego has spoken out about how it plans to address sustainability and emissions. A few years ago, the Danish company announced that it was exploring a new alternative for its bricks, using a material that used recycled plastic bottles instead of an oil-based ABS plastic, and now, according to The Financial Times, Lego has actually abandoned this alternative due to having higher carbon emissions than expected.

As for the exact reasoning, according to Lego head of sustainability, Tim Brooks, the new alternative would have required the creation of a lot of new equipment, which would have meant it would have resulted in more carbon emissions over its lifetime than the plastic Lego currently uses.

“To make the production [van gerecycled PET] to scale up, the level of disruption to the production environment was such that we had to change everything in our plants. After all that, the carbon footprint would have been higher. It was disappointing.”

This problem facing Lego is just one that most companies face today in an effort to reduce fossil fuel use while also becoming carbon neutral.