Lego scraps plan to make bricks from recycled bottles

Lego says it has scrapped plans to make its bricks from recycled bottles.

In 2021, the Danish toy company announced that it wanted to stop using an oil-based material to make its bricks within two years.

However it discovered that the new method wouldn't reduce carbon emissions.

Lego said it remains "fully committed" to making bricks from sustainable materials.

What's happened?

Like many other companies, Lego has been looking at alternative materials to plastic in order to make its products more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

One of the challenges has been finding a material that is hard-wearing enough to last for generations.

The toy giant currently makes more than 4,000 different bricks and many of them are made using a plastic made from crude oil.

Two years ago, Lego said it had developed a prototype brick made mainly from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles.

The hope was that this material could offer an alternative to the oil-based bricks.

However, Lego has now said that after more than two years of testing, it had found that using recycled PET bottles didn't reduce carbon emissions.

As a result, it said it has "decided not to progress" with making bricks from the material.

Instead, Lego said it was currently testing and developing bricks made from "a range of alternative sustainable materials".

The company told the BBC: "We remain fully committed to making Lego bricks from sustainable materials by 2032."