This week I’m running two different climate education events where I’ll be using Lego. I have a number of Lego-based climate workshops and I’ll tell you about them another time. Depending on the audience though, I do get a recurring question: isn’t it a bit ironic to be using so much plastic in an environmental workshop?
There are two answers to that. The first is that we should be a bit more nuanced in our opposition to plastic. Plastic is an amazing material. It can last for decades without losing its strength or its colour. That makes it a very bad choice of material for single-use packaging, but a very good choice of material for construction toys. I have Lego pieces in our collection that are being played with for a third generation. One distinctive piece – a row of tiny trees that was last used in my daughter’s DIY Hogwarts greenhouse – dates from 1954. So as plastic goes, Lego is a very good use of it, in my opinion.
The second answer is that Lego themselves are well aware that their material isn’t sustainable. It’s oil based and it’s not biodegradeable. A couple of years ago the firm announced that they were looking for a sustainable plastic for their bricks, and last month they issued an update. In short, they say it’s difficult.
They already have a bio-plastic recipe for softer elements, including the trees and plants. A sustainable alternative for everything else has proved elusive. Lego got quite close with a plastic made from recycled bottles, and announced a prototype in 2021. After testing, it didn’t quite have the clutch power that they needed and they don’t want to compromise on quality. They also ran the numbers on producing it at scale and found that there would be no net reduction in carbon emissions.
So they’re not there yet, and it’s not for lack of trying. They have now tested over 300 different plastic recipes in search of something that has the same quality, and a team of 150 people working on the problem. It’s taking longer than expected, but they’re tripling their investment and will have spent $1.4 billion on sustainability initiatives by 2025.
Beyond my personal and professional interest in Lego, I think there are a couple of things to note here. One is that moving past plastic is easy to call for and very hard to deliver. There are lots of individual companies trying to do the right thing – and many more choosing not to bother – but I’d love to see more cooperation and shared learning. More R&D, more public and philanthropic investment. It will take so much longer if everyone is starting from scratch and replicating the same experiments, so global cooperation is going to be important in creating a circular economy for plastics.
Secondly, I find myself wondering what it will take to shift the wider industry to sustainable alternatives. Lego, despite its size, is still a privately owned family business. There are no shareholders breathing down their necks, and they can dedicate some impressive resources to sustainability. It’s hard to imagine other toy companies doing the same, even if they have the means to do so. That goes for every other company making things out of plastic, not just toys.
That leads me to the first answer to that recurring question. If moving beyond plastic is very hard in some industries, then we need to push even harder when there is a clear alternative. If we want to reduce the overall amount of plastic created in the world – all of which will last thousands of years – then we need to focus on what’s possible now. Where can we make a difference? What forms of plastic are without excuse right now?
Those are the places to focus on – things like plastic cutlery and stirrers, for example. Nobody gets a pass on plastic forever, because we can’t keep making a non-biodegradeable material. But we should direct our attention to the most egregious uses of plastic, and buy a little time with the trickier things. And we should share learning and cooperate wherever possible, to move the whole transition beyond plastic a little faster.
The Earthbound Report 
Great post!