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Lego Struggles to Find a Plant-Based Plastic That Clicks
- cosmodisk 7y agoI appreciate the initiative, however even without it, Lego isn't something that gets thrown away after a few months use,if at all.
- extropy 7y agoHmm I'm not following. This is about moving away from oil dependance, not making bricks bio degenerable.
- nerfhammer 7y agoI think that the idea is it matters less if it's not a disposable product.
- whymauri 7y agoHuh? Lego makes billions of pieces a year, disposability or not.
- nerfhammer 7y agoI'm not OP but how does that compare to disposable items like plastic forks, cups, pens, bottles or bags?
- timClicks 7y agoSingle-use plastics are a much larger problem. Compare how many food wrappers you might see in the park vs Lego bricks.
- randyrand 7y agoWhy does that matter? Producing plastic is not bad. It's burning it, littering it, or throwing it away in a permanent landfills that are the bad parts. If it's not disposable, it's not bad.
- gorbypark 7y agoLess bad. I'm just making this up, but I assume something like this has to happen. Someone must drill/dig/mine for the oil (and maybe extract the bitumen from sand), transport that oil product to a refinery, refine the oil into something that can be used to make plastics, ship that refined product to a plastics manufacturing facility, make the raw plastic, ship that plastic off to Lego's manufacturing facility, make the Lego, package them up and ship it off to a warehouse where it will then be shipped to someone like Amazon who will then sell it and have it delivered to the buyer. There's a huge environmental costs to everything, whether it's oil based or plant based.
- tracker1 7y agoAs it stands, I understand the research as eventually crude oil will run out. For the most part, afaik, our plastics are a useful byproduct of our oil consumption for fuel that would otherwise be more landfill waste. It's best to make reusable and long term use plastics from that material. As to plastics from plant sources, it seems that a lot of what we do use for disposable containers and packaging are a better fit for those sources considering how well they break down. Of course, this all assumes that proper landfills are used and it isn't just shipped out of the country of use.
- vbuwivbiu 7y agohopefully they will move away from oil but nevertheless Lego is the only product I can think of I don't mind lasting for millennia for future peoples to enjoy
- Hedja 7y agoWhat 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.
- pkulak 7y agoSure... and then Starbucks sells 43 more drinks in the next 100ms and completely overwhelms your example.
- benologist 7y agoEven 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.
- thrower123 7y agoNo thanks. The older bricks break down and become brittle and discolored if exposed to sunlight enough already.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zaarn 7y agoDestroy the environment because you want bricks to not discolor after 10 years? I guess, sure, that's how we got into the climate change problem too, why not for the plastic problem?
- Arbalest 7y agoA product that doesn't last multiple generations to be passed down, and justified by the use of green materials? Sounds like a business dream.
- cure 7y agoI've got some from ~25 years ago that are discolored due to exposure to sunlight. There are ways to fix that (http://lego.jtooker.com/whitening/ http://lego.jtooker.com/whitening/). I haven't noticed them getting brittle, though. I've also got some bricks that are much older (from the 60s I think), and are still usable. They haven't spent time in the sun, so they are not even discolored.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoMy 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.
- thrower123 7y agoYou might be surprised at the value. There's quite a collector's market for older Lego sets, if you check sites like Bricklink.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoThere are no complete sets, just loose bricks and a few instructions.
- natch 7y agoSets is just one mindset. There are people with a different mindset who do want unsorted bricks. I do realize you were replying to a specific mention of sets though.
- baddox 7y agoI've looked into it a bit. With some exceptions for very rare pieces, it's almost certainly not worth the effort of cataloging all your random LEGO pieces, unless you enjoy the process itself.
- jacquesm 7y agoAgreed, that's not worth it if you value your time. But a rough idea of what sets are in there plus a kg price and someone will be happy to take it.
- Symbiote 7y agoSpread it out onto the floor, photograph it, and stick it on eBay for $20 or whatever. Or, donate it to a school or charity shop (thrift store?). That you don't want to realise the full value doesn't mean it has no value.
- magic_beans 7y agoThat's very anecdotal. Just because you might have been attached to Legos, doesn't mean everyone is.
- jacquesm 7y agoThere is a near insatiable market for second hand lego. So even if you're not attached to it plenty of people value it enough that you'll be able to recoup a substantial fraction of your initial outlay. Lego holds its value better than most other commodities.
- zubspace 7y agoThe 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 7y agoYes, 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.
- byron_fast 7y agoI doubt their customers care. They should make things their customers care about.
- FredDollen 7y agoIt's more about virtue signaling
- AaronFriel 7y agoThat's a rather cynical accusation. What if the people signaling this virtue are doing so because they genuinely believe in it?
- ravenstine 7y agoWhy would you assume that? Granted, there is a lot of corporate virtue signalling, and it's existed since time immemorial, but I don't get the sense Lego is necessarily virtue signalling in this case, or at least virtue signalling in a way that isn't genuine. One reason I say this is because it's a family-owned company and really aren't comparable to a corporate giants like Procter & Gamble(which happens to be known for blatant virtue signalling), Coca Cola, or Disney, to name a few. I don't think it's farfetched for someone in charge at Lego to see value in biodegradable plastic, and there really isn't much of a reason for them not to research into and use biodegradable plastic if it was a viable alternative to whatever they're currently using. Now, if they were making commercials about biodegradable Legos that don't exist, or "toxic masculinity", or saving the whales, then you could definitely say that Lego is virtue signalling. But I don't see that here.
- thrower123 7y agoIt sort of is. The last time I saw this story going around, it was that they were swapping out the rubberier non-ABS bits that are almost always green tree elements to some kind of sugarcane-based polyethelene. https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2018/march/pfp https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2018/march/pfp
- 7y ago
- jacquesm 7y agoThe 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 7y agoI 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 7y agoI 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 7y agoIf they create a suitable plastic substitute, they'll make a mint off the technology alone.