Back in August, we wrote about LEGO’s groundbreaking braille bricks, which were designed to help people who are blind or visually impaired become familiar with the braille alphabet.
Today, we have more good news from LEGO. The Danish toymaker announced plans to ditch plastic packaging for its products in favor of recyclable paper.
“We received lots of letters from children asking why we still use single-use plastic in our boxes, which inspired us to begin to make this change,” said Tim Brooks, vice president of environmental responsibility at LEGO. “This is part of our ambition to make all our packaging sustainable by the end of 2025.”
As a part of a $400 million investment into sustainable initiatives over the next three years, LEGO said the new paper bags will start appearing in LEGO boxes starting in 2021. Replacing plastic packaging with paper will save about 5,000 metric tons of plastic used each year.
Of course, while this is a positive initiative, the big problem for the Danish toymaker is the LEGO pieces themselves, which require 90,000 metric tons of plastic a year to make. LEGO has been trying for years to create alternatives to the petroleum-based plastic used in its blocks, but much progress must still be made to produce sustainable LEGO bricks that are equally safe, durable, and compatible with older bricks.
