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Lego Struggles To Find a Plant-Based Plastic That Clicks (wsj.com) 189

Posted by BeauHD from the piece-of-the-puzzle dept.
Last year, it was reported that Lego was investing $120 million and hiring about 100 people to eliminate its dependence on petroleum-based plastics, and build its toys entirely from plant-based or recycled materials by 2030. The effort has been seven years in the making, "but it keeps hitting brick walls," as The Wall Street Journal reports. From the report: Lego tried making pieces from corn, but they were too soft. Its wheat-based bricks didn't absorb color evenly or have the requisite shine. Bricks made from other materials proved too hard to pull apart, broke or had what executives call "creep," when bricks lose their grip and collapse. Lego has so far tested more than 200 combinations of materials, but just 2% of its products are made from plant-based plastic. The Danish company says it is still exploring several promising options, but finding the material to hit its target is proving difficult. Some materials proved problematic to mold with Lego's existing machinery. Recycled plastic is an option, but Lego needs large food-grade volumes with guarantees on provenance and quality.

Lego's slow progress is emblematic of a broader struggle to use plants like corn and sugar cane instead of oil to make plastic, which advocates say would lower greenhouse-gas emissions. Lego has had some success with plastic partly made of plants. So has Coca-Cola, which has sold bottles using 30% plant-based packaging since 2009. But unlike Coca-Cola, when Lego couldn't find a way to source the remaining 70%, it decided not to go to market. "Ultimately we want a zero-impact product," said Tim Guy Brooks, Lego's head of environmental responsibility. For now, there's always recycling -- Lego-style.
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Lego Struggles To Find a Plant-Based Plastic That Clicks More

Lego Struggles To Find a Plant-Based Plastic That Clicks

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  • Werenâ(TM)t the original blocks made out of cellulose acetate?

    • Re:Canâ(TM)t it go back to the original plast (Score:4, Interesting)

      by _merlin ( 160982 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @10:47PM (#58753808) Homepage Journal

      The ABS bricks have better long-term stability than the original cellulose acetate ones. They keep locking together decades later. My sons have Lego sets with the new plant-based parts in them You can tell the difference immediately. They don't have that same glossy sheen, they don't feel as smooth to touch, they just don't have the same feeling of quality. It's going to be hard for them to find a replacement that doesn't feel worse in some way.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by robi5 ( 1261542 )

        Not sure if loss of shine, or not locking together decades after, is such a big price for eliminating underground carbon use. It feels like a tradeoff but it's not like Lego in general, or at least some aspect of its aesthetic quality, is as fundamental to the survival of our and tons of other species as the reduction in mineral plastic use.

        • Re:Canâ(TM)t it go back to the original plast (Score:4, Insightful)

          by _merlin ( 160982 ) on Thursday June 13, 2019 @03:53AM (#58754480) Homepage Journal

          If we can stop burning oil, then we can use it for things like making durable plastic products and not have to worry about the level of consumption. The oil that gets burned dwarfs the amount used to make plastics. (Yes, single-use plastics are a big problem, and should be eliminated where possible.)

        • Re:Canâ(TM)t it go back to the original plast (Score:5, Insightful)

          by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday June 13, 2019 @07:57AM (#58755068)

          Lego has competition in the building block market. They cannot afford to sell an inferior products compared to their competitors, especially as their competitors are using cheaper prices as an advantage.
          Most consumers have a hard time realizing the carbon footprint of the products they buy. Being that Lego's are a toy that lasts long, and can be passed down to generations, any extra carbon offset for quality would be considered to be made up for its long use.

        • Not sure if loss of shine, or not locking together decades after, is such a big price for eliminating underground carbon use. It feels like a tradeoff but it's not like Lego in general, or at least some aspect of its aesthetic quality, is as fundamental to the survival of our and tons of other species as the reduction in mineral plastic use.

          Well, sure, I guess they can throw up their hands, close the factories, fire everyone and give up.

          Frankly, I'm surprised that more companies aren't doing just that, yo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        You wouldn't think it, but Lego faces some really tough engineering precision requirements in order to get the blocks to hold together with just the right tension from any connection orientation. Something like 25 microns if I remember right.

  • Well at least they are mostly not thrown out (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @08:42PM (#58753384)

    I'm sure some Lego stuff is thrown out by accident, but unlike plastic bottles or silverware, people will tend not to throw out Lego things - they will either keep them for a long time, or sell them, or give them away where someone else will use them.

    So the fact they are plastic from petroleum, does not seem to matter as much as for other plastics...

    • Agreed, let's work on things made in the billions and immediately discarded first, like diapers.
    • Exactly. THIS. Oil comes up, gets made into something useful that is rarely thrown away--carbon is sequestered, climatistas should be happy. OTOH, if Lego corp makes a substandard "green" Lego product, they may cause great damage to their brand. Just make good quality bricks like you've done in the past.
      • They could market it as "Green Edition" or whatever, where expectations are set appropriately, and people would pay a premium for the lower quality.

    • Re:Well at least they are mostly not thrown out (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @09:39PM (#58753610)

      This was exactly my thought. Legos are expensive, but incredibly durable and long lasting. Leave the formula alone, Lego Corp. No one sane throws Legos out anyhow.

      Plastics are just fine for durable goods. We need to figure out how to reduce the volume of low-grade waste plastic that gets immediately thrown out, like with packaging. Example: in my grocery store, fresh baked bread is sold in open paper bags, but they have plastic cellophane on the front of the bag so you can see the loaf inside. Yes, that looks very nice, but there's absolutely no reason for it other than aesthetic appeal.

      I mean, I'm glad they got rid of plastic grocery bags in my area. I'm happy to bring my own bags when shopping. But there's still a lot more that could be done without creating any unnecessary health risks or driving up expenses to a prohibitive degree. As consumers, we should start encouraging recyclable or biodegradable packaging wherever it's practical.

      • Maybe the Legos corporation wants the bricks to biodegrade so that they can sell more and more of them. It isn't necessarily a 'green' move on their part, more of a commercial move.

        • The fact that they've spend $120 million without releasing a viable product yet encourages me to give them the benefit of the doubt on this issue. If this is a money-making scheme, they're not going about it the right way.

        • Read the article..... (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Obviously you didn't read the article. One of the requirements they have in the plastic they are looking for is that it NOT biodegrade.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by robi5 ( 1261542 )

            I think it's not true that a large segment of population plays with decades old lego. Sure it happens but not a lot, in proportion: these things tend to get shoved in garages and attics never to be looked again; get misplaced, sets going incomplete etc. Also, the company makes a living making them, what with a growing, wealthier and reachable population, and lego sets becoming trend follower items. A set that's appreciated by today's kids won't resonate with their own children. Etc. etc.

            In short, maybe it'd

            • The great thing about them is you don't need a "set" or some specific model. While I'm sure a lot of people value Legos because they can buy a "set" that builds a specific "thing", basically a brick version of the old plastic model built with glue.

              IMHO, this kind of ruined Lego in a lot of ways. You ended up with too many custom pieces which made the finished models look better and overcame the blockiness and engineering problems of making certain shapes with standard bricks.

              Sure, the finished models look

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Lego needs to keep innovating and developing its product, because now their patents have expired other people can make similar bricks and sell them much cheaper.

        Making them more environmentally friendly is just one way they can do that. Other examples include the licences they have been picking up for things like Batman and Star Wars, or the movies and video games, or the Mindstorms programmable bricks.

        I suppose potentially there could be a big market for any new plastic alternative they invent too. Imagine

      • > Example: in my grocery store, fresh baked bread is sold in open paper bags, but they have plastic cellophane on the front of the bag so you can see the loaf inside. Yes, that looks very nice, but there's absolutely no reason for it other than aesthetic appeal.

        Wellll... actually the reason that cellophane is there is so that people can look at the bread to judge it for freshness and quality before they buy it. If it wasn't there, then you'd have the general public pulling the bread out of the bag with

    • On the other hand, the continued use of durable petroleum-based plastics means that every Lego brick can also maintain its potency as an indoor land mine for decades!

    • Legos are practically family heirlooms at this point. Someone in your family has a giant box of them and they go into storage during the periods when there are no family members that can make use of them. You'd think this ever growing box of Legos would mostly encourage children to get interested in engineering but, it's starting to have an unintended side-effect: Archeology.

      Dig into any generation spanning box of Legos and you are bound to find all sorts of ancient and bizarre things: G.I. Joe heads, b

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by robi5 ( 1261542 )

        This is at least the romantic fantasy and it's partly true. In practice, I wonder about the "age tree" of legos: 1) a distribution of age of all the presently existing lego pieces; 2) a percentage of surviving lego items by age (ie. what fraction of the total weight made in 19xx survives till today); 3) life expectancy of a currently sold lego; 4) out of which, the duration it's played vs the duration locked in storage.

        Also, idealization aside, Lego has been undergoing a shift from generic lego blocks, whic

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by robi5 ( 1261542 )

      That doesn't change the fact that the company is spouting tons upon tons of plastic as we speak. It's not like some quantity was made and now people just swap among one another: in fact their marketing and sales efforts are antithetical to just sticking to reuse. It's driven by many things: population increase, overall wealth increase, better product accessibility, new models and successful sales&marketing by Lego. Yes there are still a lot of one-time uses of plastic and it's of a higher priority to ph

      • I'm not sure why the first points in the above post are so hard for some people to grasp. Yes, Legos last a very very long time and seldom get thrown out, but people are still buying them new as well. Manufacturing continues to march on as demand stays up. If Lego wants to invest in a more environmentally-friendly manufacturing process, why are people upset about it? This doesn't devalue existing sets and they want new sets to work with existing bricks. There's plenty to love about the process, and set

    • About half my kid's Legos came from a couple of estate sales and were someone else's in the late 70s. He's past Legos now and most of what he had has been sold at garage sales or given away to relatives.

      Say what you want about their plastic nature, but they are a very durable toy compared to many others. I'm not sure if its because Lego is still considered a good brand, but they also don't seem to become "dated" like most other toys.

    • Given the price/weight of legos on the after sale market (it is huge to start with and barely decreases), it is indeed a non-problem. There is just zero waste due to Legos.

      Best use of oil ever. Keep making those bricks out of oil -- DO NOT replace any oil by CO2-emitting plant stuff.

    • If only you and everyone agreeing with you read the entire summary.

      "Lego's slow progress is emblematic of a broader struggle to use plants like corn and sugar cane instead of oil to make plastic, which advocates say would lower greenhouse-gas emissions."

      Not only are Legos likely not thrown away very often but when they are, what's the problem? Plastic buried in the ground doesn't hurt anything.

  • How about the consequences of using farming to (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @08:43PM (#58753386)

    make plastics? Won't this create competition between feeding people and making materials? Won't this lead to a rise in food prices? How much additional farm land will be required, resulting in clearing forests? How much additional water will be required for the additional crops?

    Another example of emotional good intentions ignoring the realities. Plastics are not the problem they're made out to be. They have plenty of benefits. The issue isn't plastics, it's how third world nations handle their trash. Rather than looking at how to handle the actual issue, environmentalists are pushing extreme measures. How much of this is born from hatred of petroleum producers versus pragmatic reasoning?

    • That really depends on what they ultimately find that works. If it can be manufactured from part of the plant that humans don't consume, then it potentially makes some food even cheaper as the farmers can sell part of the plant that would otherwise be thrown away. There's also a possibility that it comes from a plant that can be used as a part of a crop rotation to keep the soil in good shape while providing economic value in and of itself.

      I think in this particular case it's not a good investment on the

  • Did they try hemp? (Score:5, Funny)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @08:44PM (#58753392) Journal

    How about whale oil?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Wood? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ToTheStars ( 4807725 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @09:01PM (#58753460)
      Going from plastic to wood would be closing the circle for LEGO; they got started in 1932 making wooden toys (like the iconic duck: https://lego.fandom.com/wiki/L... [fandom.com]).
    • I was thinking stainless steel or aluminum. Given how much they charge, the cost would not be prohibitive. However, steel and wood have the same problem: they can't have the glossy candy colors that legos are known for. Given that they rejected the wheat-based plastics for just this reason, non-plastic materials are probably not an option.

      Wood also won't snap together in the way that the plastic does, and steel may be too hard for that.

      • Maybe some compromise of making most of a Lego out of wood or some renewable material, but only using plastic as a coating (for color and sheen) and maybe for the connector parts?

        Maybe the goal should be a 100% renewable Lego, but maybe if you got the total plastic content down to about 15% it would be a reasonable enough improvement until materials science evolves.

        • It says in the summary that they have a solution which is 30% renewable and 70% non-renewable, and they rejected it for not being a sufficient improvement.

      • I was thinking stainless steel or aluminum.

        Well, we did have Erector Set:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Although screwing everything together with those tiny nuts and bolts required too much patience for small children. It's much easier to just snap two Lego bricks together.

    • How about wood?

      Hmmm . . . maybe Lego should look at Tinkertoy:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      . . . huh huh, huh huh . . . He said "wood" . . . Hey Beavis, quit playing with your Tinkertoy!

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • How about wood? It's plant-based. You might have to alter the together-fitting and locking system, but... wood should work and has the advantage of not having to be processed. Just dry it, and chop it up. Solved.

      My grandparents used to have a set of wooden Lego type blocks. From playing with them, I can state that they warp, break, and split over time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      How about wood? It's plant-based. You might have to alter the together-fitting and locking system, but... wood should work and has the advantage of not having to be processed. Just dry it, and chop it up. Solved.

      Wood makes nitrocellulose based plastics which are pretty good but have some issues.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • One of the cools things about 3D printing is that the main plastic used, Polylactic Acid, is biodegradable, and I believe made from corn starch... It doesn't like water much, though

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      And I'm sure they've looked at PLA. Compared to the plastic that Legos are made of PLA is harder and more brittle, and probably doesn't hold the same tolerances.

      Using some nice OpenSCAD models that let me tweak the tolerances I have 3D-printed a few passable Lego-compatible pieces using PLA.

  • Its wheat-based bricks didn't absorb color evenly or have the requisite shine....

    Because when the Cockroach Scientists who come after us are digging through the smoldering remains of our planet, it's nice to know they'll be able to say,

    "humans...gotta give this to them; they fsckd up the entire planet for a million years to come, and made themselves extinct....but hey, their plastic toy bricks were really, really shiny and had a nice uniform color"...

    Seriously, we're sending the planetary ecosystem o

  • It may seem that they are obsessed with seeking perfection. I understand that they have had competitors selling fake Legos. They all failed because of poor quality control. That simple click is important, kids will know the difference if it isn't there.

    Certain companies, certain individuals have been known for seeking this kind of perfection. Everyone here recognizes Steve Jobs for that. Possibly Elon Musk will develop such a reputation. Watchmakers, shoemakers, craftsmen in many fields still take pride in

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not just quality control.

      The molds for lego is next to perfection, the tolerances (0.002 mm) needed to make a lego brick be able to click and release with the correct amount of force is staggering.

  • ... stand up to being stepped on? Same blood-curdling scream from parents?

  • How many light bulbs did Edison make?

  • I don't see any struggle here. Their "goal" is 2030 which is 11 years away. They have only put 7 years of work in.

    In R&D like this, you don't fail.... you just don't succeed immediately. They knew this. The deadline/goal proves this. It is trial and error. They will most likely find something eventually. It will most likely be something that has already proved "problematic" but with some new additive or refinement process.

    Why is this news?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      Because R&D does have goals. They have missed all the initial goals of even finding a product that could replace plastic, the rest of the time should be spent on developing it out, making new production processes, molds etc.

  • Sweet sweet trade secrets (Score:3)

    by WolfgangVL ( 3494585 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @10:17PM (#58753734)

    Best to get the R&D in now, while you can still sell petrol based plastics in toys. Legos gonna be sitting on a nifty pile cutting edge material science based patents and trade secrets when it really counts.

  • I think the long-term problem is that we don't recycle all plastics - only a small amount of packaging.
    The highest quantities of high-grade plastics are not in packaging but in household and office objects: old telephones, furniture, computer peripherals.

    All of it should be recycled, not just packaging.
    All new plastic should be required to carry some kind of machine-readable resin identification code [wikipedia.org]. And that includes Lego bricks!

  • Basically, people write to Lego asking if they accept old bricks for recycling. Lego don't, and as the bricks are made to last several generations, Lego ask that the bricks be gifted to someone else. Hence recycling, Lego style -- let someone else play with them now.

  • quote: Its wheat-based bricks didn't absorb color evenly or have the requisite shine.

    Is that it? They didn't look exactly like the old bricks and therefore were unacceptable?

  • Can plant not be broken down into the basic feedstocks for ABS? Granted, I do not understand the point of doing so, but I think it would be possble at some cost. That woukd get the box checked.

    The last thing anyone wants is LEGO elements that degrade over time.

  • The precursors for ABS plastic can all be synthesized from non-petroleum sources. But it's expensive. Seems like a standard engineering three-way trade-off: inexpensive, plant-based, duplicates ABS's physical properties; choose any two. If LEGO can solve this problem, they'll make more money off the royalties from the process than they do from their toys.

  • ...that shatters easily when I step on it on the stairway, barefoot, at night.
    Especially the big ones!

  • At least partially. Since petroleum was formed from the remains of ancient plants and animals, it's ALL plant-based.

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