Last week, I went to my childhood home in France and found a perfectly preserved 40 year old set of Lego Technic from my childhood, and gave them to my daughter

Last week, I went to my childhood home in France and found a perfectly preserved 40 year old set of Lego Technic from my childhood, and gave them to my daughter to play with. It's going to be well-nigh impossible for Lego to test the longevity of a plant-based replacement, accelerated simulated testing only provides an upper bound. The only viable option for them would be to find a process to produce ABS using plant-based feedstocks, a process that will likely be an order of magnitude more expensive than petroleum-based ABS, at least to start with. The article mentions PLA (shudder). It's well known filament material for low-end 3D printing hobbyists, and far inferior to ABS in its physical properties, not to mention that little problem of being water-soluble. The fact they even considered that garbage does not augur well of the judgment of whoever is responsible for the project.