Lego will sell its first sustainable pieces later this year | Hacker News Reader

Lego will sell its first sustainable pieces later this year

theverge.com

19 pointschrisper10 comments

That's good, but honestly I feel like Lego are maybe one of the best uses of plastic. High tolerances, resistant to wear and pretty much infinitely resuable (across literally generations!).

Where plastic is a much greater issue is when it's disposable, like in say the clear plastic bags that the legos in the box ship in.

Interesting point, that makes me think they're really tackling two birds with one stone here: "sustainability" and increasing revenue because people will have to buy legos more often.

It's a bit silly, right? Like, LEGOs are already sustainable because they are so long lasting.

If there was one good use left for petro-chemicals, this is kind of the case. Ultra-durable products that can be reused infinitely. It seems like growing, harvesting, and processing plant materials would be more resource intensive.

Indeed, fair concern: Will making these LEGOs differently cause this to be less so? Will becoming "sustainable" degrade the lifetime of LEGO collections over time?

(Honestly, this may be a reasonable issue for LEGO at some point. Nobody in their right mind throws LEGOs away, someday it will hardly make sense to buy new LEGOs because there will be so many in the market already.)

> Indeed, fair concern: Will making these LEGOs differently cause this to be less so? Will becoming "sustainable" degrade the lifetime of LEGO collections over time?

> The new sustainable LEGO elements are made from polyethylene, which is a soft, durable and flexible plastic, and while they are based on sugar-cane material, they are technically identical to those produced using conventional plastic. The elements have been tested to ensure the plant-based plastic meets the high standards for quality and safety that the LEGO Group has, and consumers expect from LEGO products.

Note that this is being deployed only for "botanical elements" (bushes, trees, …) currently.

I read both of those facts, yes. But I've got LEGOs going back decades that demonstrate the actual long-term quality of the existing processes, we have yet to see how the new ones fare.

And obviously, LEGO will presumably expand the usage of this process if it works well, is cost effective, or becomes generally preferred.

Win-win for Lego, their parts don't last as long and its great for public image. Legos ending up in landfills isn't a real problem.

> If they’re worn and no longer usable, you can recycle them with regular household plastics.

Who are these people and what are they doing with the LEGOs?

Dog owners. I lost many a piece to chewing.

I wonder what's the delta on the actual production process. It seems the pieces themselves won't have a great impact as they're super durable. Is the factory any more efficient for these new pieces?

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