Lego Scraps Blocks Made Out Of Recycled Bottles After Realizing That They Are Even Worse For The Environment

Lego announced they're dropping plans to start making their blocks out of recycled plastic bottles.

The reason? Well, it turns out that those recycled plastic Legos would have actually been worse for the environment than the regular ones.

The Financial Times reported that the company had been working to roll out an oil-free plastic version of their iconic blocks that millions have enjoyed building with and have caused millions more to experience the excruciating pain of stepping on one.

So, using recycled bottles seemed like a pretty good idea, until the company started testing it.

The company tested a prototype brick made from recycled polyethylene terephthalate, or RPET. This hope was that this would be the ticket to ditching the oil-base plastic acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS which makes up about 80% of the billions of blocks the Danish company pumps out.

“In the early days, the belief was that it was easier to find this magic material or this new material,” Lego chief executive Niels Christiansen said, but “that doesn’t seem to be there. We tested hundreds and hundreds of materials. It’s just not been possible to find a material like that.”

A Lego man made out of Legos. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP) (Photo by JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images)

Lego Realized It's Own Climate Pledge Was A Tall Order

The company found that adopting this new material would ultimately lead to greater carbon emissions because they would need to acquire new machinery to manufacture the blocks. This would have caused a significant disruption to their manufacturing process.

Hey, I get it. But this is the problem with companies making these environmental pledges. It's all in the name of PR, and when they fail or don't jive with the financial bottom line, they shrug and go, "Well, we gave it a go."

Lego previously replaced 20% of the oil-based plastic in their product with a plant-based alternative, but that pesky 80% - or as experts would say - "most of it" — is proving to be a bridge too far.

The company was one of many that set a target date of 2030 to eliminate petroleum-based plastics in its products.

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