First sustainable Lego pieces to go on sale | Hacker News Reader

First sustainable Lego pieces to go on sale

theguardian.com

42 pointsvs270 comments

> polyethylene – a soft, durable and flexible plastic that can now be made with ethanol extracted from sugar cane material and, Lego claims, is as durable as conventional plastic. As a bio-plastic, it can be recycled many times, though it is unlikely to be 100% biodegradable.

As a bio-plastic? polyethylene? What different does it make if your atoms were cycled through a living plant, or a dead plant in the ground (oil)?

From a chemistry point of view it makes no difference.

This is 100% greenwashing, and it relies on gullible reporters not to call them out on their nonsense.

You can make polyethylene from air. Are we calling it atmo-plastic now?

Because atoms that come from a renewable resource that can be sourced locally are preferred over atoms from non-renewable resources that come from distant lands.

Why? What difference does it make? We don't have a shortage of atoms.

From your reply and others I can see why they did this. People actually believe it makes a difference.

The environment is doomed. I'm sorry, but if people can't even tell the difference between something that helps the environment, and something that makes no difference, then I don't see how we'll ever make things better.

That’s not a very convincing response.

It’s like pointing out that electric vehicles are still dependent on fossil fuel power networks for their energy. It’s true, but misses the point that one of the requirements in transitioning to a sustainable economy is decoupling energy production methods from consumption methods. Fossil fuel as the input to a car is bad; fossil fuel as the input to a power plant, that produces electricity that is the input to a car is not perfect, but it is better. Similarly, plastics sourced from biological sources are better.

> Similarly, plastics sourced from biological sources are better.

What makes them better? Seriously. What is better about cycling them through a plant first?

You need hydrogen and carbon to make that plastic. You can get them from anywhere, it makes no difference whatsoever if a plant hold them for a while first.

It's energy that matters.

Waste is important too, in this case notably the gaseous one.

This is just absurdly overdramatic and frankly, insufferable. Why do you expect the general public and media reporters to know offhand about polymer chemistry? Why does their lack of this knowledge doom the environment?

You had a chance to amicably and clearly educate others about the misleading connotations of the term "bioplastic" and instead you launched into some kind of weird tirade. This is why society needs better science communicators.

Weird tirade? It might be tirade, but it's not weird. I'm just tired of people claiming "I'm green", while actually being worse for the environment.

> Why does their lack of this knowledge doom the environment?

Because people change their behavior based on what they find out. So it looks like legos are now "better" for the environment, because the plastic touched a plant.

But not only does it not make a difference, it's actually worse for the environment.

It reminds me of when BMW used hydropower to make electricity to each ovens for carbon fiber manufacturing.

https://www.alternative-energies.net/bmw-produces-carbon-fib...

Guess what? That's worse for the environment! Electricity is a very inefficient way to heat things. Save that electricity for where it's needed and heat your ovens with natural gas.

Instead someone else is making electricity with natural gas, and the total environmental impact is higher. But then of course BMW doesn't get to falsely claim "we're green".

> Why do you expect the general public and media reporters to know offhand about polymer chemistry?

I expect the reporter to ask a chemist. Go check and see if Lego's claim holds any water.

> Why do you expect the [...] media reporters to know offhand about polymer chemistry?

I don't expect that all media reporters have a Ph.D. in chemistry, but it would be nice that they check the information with an expert instead of just copy&paste whatever PR the company sends to them.

After all, there should be a difference between a serious newspaper with real journalist and a random dude with a blog...

I actually support any use of oil that does not include burning it. (within reason)

Better make all of it into Lego and then bury it into a landfill when it breaks, if it can be done on renewable energy.

I am not an expert in this area, but polyethylene made from living plants takes rather fewer millenia to sustainably source than polyethylene made from petroleum.

What?? No.

It makes no difference. What matters is the ENERGY. Not the atoms.

We have absolutely no shortage of atoms, we have an unlimited supply of those.

What matter is the energy inherent in the oil. And I see absolutely nothing in this press release about where the energy comes from.

Do we have an unlimited supply of petroleum and the bandwidth to extract all of it at a reasonable price? Because, last I checked, that stuff is used for a lot of other things that is not "making Legos".

Or is this just the "well, if all power isn't green it's just so futile" argument in a fetching hat?

Its about the footprint of the production.

The problem here is that prior processes in this field needed alot more input energy and they have relied on conventional power input. They actually had worse footprints despite "producing plastic from thin air".

I understand that part, and I understand opportunity cost. I don't understand the frankly nastily-phrased assertions of "greenwashing"; even if it is currently inefficient due to using additional conventional power, that's not likely to stay the case over time, and I think it's a much longer row to hoe to assert that over a reasonable time horizon it would remain inefficient enough to make it less viable than continuing with current practices.

Meanwhile, it looks like Lego-the-company is pretty heavily involved in the development of sustainable energy sources to use and to offset their own power usage[0].

[0] - https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2017/may/100-pe...

If it is inefficient to a degree, that they have a bigger footprint then standard production it is a huge problem. They arent running a study on the possibilities of this kind of plastic production, they used it in production environment. If they are creating more pollution this way despite labeling themself sustainable it kind of is greenwashing.

We're talking about the effects over a time horizon, though, not instantaneously--the instantaneous conversation is both misleading and uninteresting. Five years from now, their sustainable energy production/backing outpaces their usage, and they're still using the same process--does it magically become not-greenwashing at that point? Was it retroactively not greenwashing?

Don't get me wrong--of course greenwashing is a thing that exists. But so does unwarranted cynicism.

You are missing the point. Sourcing atoms through a plant will never be environmentally better just because the atoms touched a plant.

It's energy that matters, but this press release doesn't mention that at all (and I bet it's because this new process uses more, not less, energy).

If they save energy because the plant puts the atoms in the right configuration, that would be something. Are they? I doubt it, because if they were they would have said it.

Energy is substitutable, but the raw materials have externalities, yes, in both energy and other costs? If you are using petroproducts, you are perpetuating everything around petroproducts, from the costs of extraction (human, environmental, energy) to their externalities (pollution etc.) to the fundamentally scarce nature of them.

Using more energy in a way that can be ramped into more sustainable sources (if it currently is not sustainably sourced--but, again, Lego seems to be at the least offsetting their energy use in toto) with fewer externalities is not the same thing. There are functional curves to look at here with more variables than what the raw count of joules that the process itself uses.

This is carbon and hydrogen we are talking about. A more sustainable, more common, more easily sourced, material doesn't exist (other than nitrogen and oxygen).

You can get it from anywhere.

Getting it from a plant changes absolutely nothing.

Here's the part you are missing:

Do you know why, if it's so easy to get, they most commonly source it as a petrochemical?

It's not because oil is an especially great source, it's because when you do so you save energy. Because that oil has energy, and you can use it while making your product.

To source your atoms elsewhere, then burn oil to gain energy needed to modify your product is backwards in environmental friendliness. You are adding another layer of inefficiency to oil usage.

> There are functional curves to look at here with more variables than what the raw count of joules that the process itself uses.

That's what they want you to think "look we are making environmental progress". It's not so. Sourcing carbohydrates is easy. Energy is hard, and they've made no progress there.

I think you start your argument from the point, that sustainable energy is around the corner. I have to point out, a lot of people have thought that way for a long time. The instantaneous effect is very important if there isnt sustainable energy around the corner. If it isnt, this is plain and simply an extremely inefficient way to produce plastics.

Creating plastics from non petroleum sources is of course a great process, but it wasnt developed by Lego. Others arent using it because they produce actually a bigger footrpint with this "sustainable" process".

If I dont miss anything, Lego adapted to that process before there was a positive impact or even before a non negative impact is a realistic prediction.

> Do we have an unlimited supply of petroleum and the bandwidth to extract all of it at a reasonable price?

Pretty much yes. As long as you have a source of energy we have effectively unlimited supplies.

I said it to you in another post: It's the energy that matters, not where the atoms happened to last sit.

It's the same idea behind bio fuels, some of it is effectively solar energy. The solar energy is used by the plant to take CO2 from the atmosphere and grow. Then this is used to make bio-stuff. If later that bio-stuff releases its carbon into the atmosphere... Well it was already there to begin with, not hidden underground. At worse, and if you don't count the energy used to transform the plant material into plastic/fuel/..., this it's carbon-neutral as no new carbon atoms are released into the atmosphere.

Now I've heard people argue that in the end the energy cost to transform the plant into this bio-stuff negates the benefits from growing the material versus digging it out of the earth but I don't know enough about the subject to know who's right and who's wrong.

There's a difference in that the plant-sourced polyethylene is sequestering carbon from the air. But I agree it's mostly greenwashing, because we don't know the total atmospheric carbon balance over the whole manufacturing process.

The earliest Lego was cellulose, which is biodegradable.

They'd do better simply going back to that. Though I'm not sure how cellulose is for longevity.

I have some cellulose acetate LEGO bricks.

It's no good for longevity. They've all changed colour and deformed a bit in various ways.

As a bio-plastic? polyethylene? What different does it make if your atoms were cycled through a living plant, or a dead plant in the ground (oil)?

From a chemistry point of view it makes no difference.

There are many types of polyethylene. This particular type used by Lego apparently can be recycled more easily than other types of polyethylene for reasons not explained in the post. As for why it matters whether the plant is living or dead, there is a vast order of magnitude difference in the energy extraction cost from living plants vs finding, drilling, refining, processing, and transporting dead plants. Oil extraction is expensive and the various processes required to extract and use it come with significant environmental externalities.

You can make polyethylene from air. Are we calling it atmo-plastic now?

Citation needed. As 1/3 of the most common polyethylene molecule is carbon, and 2/3 is hydrogen, you would need some very special air to make polyethylene.

To get Hydrogen, just add some water. Moreover, perhaps you don't need liquid water because air has some water vapor, but I'm too lazy to do the stoichiometric calculation now.

Someone already though it: "Exclusive: Pioneering scientists turn fresh air into petrol in massive boost in fight against energy crisis" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-pio... [spoiler alert: they use electricity too]

It's hard to fault Lego for using fossil fuels to make their ABS bricks. The bricks just don't get thrown out and they are kept out of landfills and held onto for decades. I'm sure by 2030 they'll find sustainable precursors for their ABS production line.

In fact, by turning it into plastics, aren't they effectively preventing the carbon from being oxidized and released into the atmosphere?

Regardless of whether this is greenwashing or not, I congratulate Lego for being always on top of innovation. They now hop on the train of environment-friendly and win good publicity with it. They are constantly reinventing themselves.

I'm skeptical of PE as a substitute for ABS for the application. It would be interesting to see if someone more familiar with the process could weigh in.

The article says "production has begun on a range of Lego botanical elements or pieces such as leaves, bushes and trees". Pieces which are more flexible and, practically speaking, don't necessarily need to meet the same standards as the other pieces

I wish they would focus these on the Duplo Lego sets for Toddlers.

A Lego death star built by an adult might need to last twenty years. But a Toddler plays with a Duplo set for maximum of two years, they lose most of the pieces, and if they break it isn't that big a deal.

Then they move on to more permanent durable lego sets.

> But a Toddler plays with a Duplo set for maximum of two years

Do you actually have Toddlers when you say that? They play with them till age 7, and often even later.

And do families have just 1 kid now? Do people not give toys away to grandkids or just friends?

Yeah, our 6 year old niece plays with our 2 year old's Duplos. Duplos we got for free from a mommy group on Facebook.

Also, I'm pretty sure our toddler would have a breakdown if a Duplo broke.

Agreed... but doesn't your toddler have a breakdown about everything, all the time?

Our life is just jumping from crisis, to the next distraction every 15 minutes no matter what.

> Agreed... but doesn't your toddler have a breakdown about everything, all the time?

Mine doesn't, and I'm not looking to gratuitously introduce new sources of breakdowns.

I've got a 2.5 yr old and an 11 yr old. The toddler loves his Duplo's, but doesn't build specific things with them. Just randomly mushes them together.

My daughter who is 11 now, grew out of that phase at about 5. She wanted real Legos and wanted to follow the instructions exactly to build what was on the box. Maybe that was unusual, she is very uptight, but its what I was basing my experience on.

> But a Toddler plays with a Duplo set for maximum of two years,

Lego and Duplo are compatible, so as long as someone is free building (rather than just following instructions on a set) with Lego, there is no reason not to use Duplo as part of that. Unless their parents gave them away, most kids I've known that kept playing with Lego kept their Duplo too.

> they lose most of the pieces

Duplo pieces are pretty large and distinct, so if they are used indoors, the recovery rate is pretty high. I kind of doubt this, especially on a two-year time frame.

> and if they break it isn't that big a deal.

Broken shards of rigid plastic around toddlers is, in fact, a big deal, for the same reason people tend not to let toddlers play with steak knives and scissors.

Keep in mind that the plant "bricks" have always been flexible and not made from ABS. The only thing Lego is changing is the raw material for the plastic, not the plastic itself.

Now that I think of it, I seem to remember the plant parts as having a waxy feel to them compared to the regular bricks, consistent with PE, so maybe the only thing they changed was the feedstock.

They aren't substituting for ABS. ABS continues.

This is a substitute for the existing non-ABS, non-rubber parts. (You probably know that LEGO makes more tires than anyone else in the world.) Certain small parts are molded in a softer, non-ABS plastic, and PE is the replacement for that. Look for rubbery-feeling parts in existing sets.

Has the ABS for the usual non-flexible bricks changed in a documented way over the years? White bricks from the 1980s get yellowish, but white bricks from the 1990s don't. Current bricks seem shinier and have a bit different feel than bricks from the 1990s (even ones that aren't particularly worn).

I think you just need to wait, or expose them to more sunlight. The actual yellowing is due to a flame retardant.[0]

[0] http://www.instructables.com/id/Restoring-yellowed-Stormtroo...

Additives and anti-oxidants have got better I think. Pretty much all plastic from the 60s - 80s is prone to hardening and yellowing. In the worst cases the surface can start crumbling. See old computer cases for instance.

Producing sugar cane uses a lot of water and draws a lot of nutrients from the soil.

WWF information on sugar cane production. https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sugarcane

A little off topic, but I recently found out that you essentially can't buy plain old legos+ anymore. I wanted to buy some as a gift and I ended up having to buy knock offs because the lego company effectively doesn't sell them anymore.

+ I.e. full height 2x2, 2x3, 2x4

I don't know where you come from, but in france you can easily buy sets that contain lots of basic bricks (full height 2x2, 2x4, etc), and you can buy them individually, in large batches. It has never been easier than today to find those pieces.

Is this what you are looking for from Toy's R Us?

https://www.toysrus.com/product?productId=45199456&source=CA...

That's the closest I found, but it still has plenty of wheels, doors, windows, half height pieces, round pieces, eyes, knobs, flat on top pieces, etc, etc, etc. The child I was buying for has some sets like that, but I wanted to buy just a large number of regular lego blocks for freeform play. I couldn't find anything on their website like that other than individually picking out single blocks.

Pretty sure that's never actually been a thing.

The Lego Store near me has bins separated by color. You can buy as many pieces as you need of each size. Kind of like how you buy bulk candy or nuts at Whole Foods.

For the price they charge for that, though, they'd be better off buying one of the creative line boxes and throwing out all of the non-rectangular pieces. Which would be dumb to do, but apparently they want those pieces and none others.

Yeah the 'basic' sets I got in the 70's had plenty of wheels, slopes, windows, and those weird articulated arm people- the mythic age of children building everything out of rectangles never really existed.

It seems they have:

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=5576...

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=6177...

Sometimes I see Ebay sellers selling random bricks by the pound.

This is one of the best ways to go. If you're lucky, you can come upon somebody who isn't a professional seller that's getting rid of a whole collection, and snag an entire tub for < $100.

This is really helpful, thanks. Not sure why I didn't think of it.

All those specialty pieces are useful in freeform play and have definitely been a part of the non-specific Lego boxes since at least when I was getting them as a kid starting in the 1970s.

There's a Lego store near me where I can buy pieces by the spadeful. I'm not sure what you're on about.

https://shop.lego.com/en-CA/LEGO-Creative-Supplement-10693

This looks pretty basic.

Go to any LEGO store and they have bins where you can pick and choose single pieces.

You can buy individual bricks off Bricklink. It's basically Ebay but exclusively for LEGO.

That's a painful way to buy half a kilo of Lego standard blocks though.

Maybe parent poster could buy a couple of kg of Lego from Ebay, then sort and wash it. The wheels, doors, etc can be donated to local charities / goodwill etc.

You can visit the online Lego store and pick out any number of any colour of the plain (or any other) bricks that you want.

https://shop.lego.com/en-CA/Pick-a-Brick

There's a search filter.

You can filter by colour and by name, for ex: 2x4

> little off topic, but I recently found out that you essentially can't buy plain old legos+ anymore.

Sure you can. If you just want non-themed sets heavy in classic pieces, they are sold as Lego “Creative Box” or “Creative Set” in various sizes [0]; if you want specific pieces in the common sizes, you can go into a Lego Store and handpick want you want from bins in the wall and pay by the bag.

[0] e.g., https://shop.lego.com/en-US/LEGO-Large-Creative-Brick-Box-10...

I have fond memories about building stuff with Lego and still remember what they were about. Depending on how this change is reflected in the themes of the Lego sets, it could have more positive environmental impact from educating kids about sustainability than from the direct changes of manufacturing process. More people who prefer sustainable choices over disposable plastics will make a difference.

They could make a recycling plant set :)

I'm guessing it's cheaper. Why else would they?

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