Growing up, two of my favorite toys were Lego and Hot Wheels. I would spend hours building cities and garages to house my steadily growing collection of cars. I even had carpet that looked like a city, and I would raise ornate buildings of my own devices. Looking back, what really stood out was the feeling that, so long as my skyscrapers didn’t topple over, I knew I had created something sturdy, something built to last—even for a miniature city.
On Monday, the Financial Times reported on toymaker Lego backtracking on its promise to make Lego bricks out of 100% recycled PET plastic (rPET). Further, they labeled it a “sustainability setback” after Lego learned that the rPET bricks had a higher carbon emission footprint than the typical Lego brick made from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). “Lego has abandoned its highest-profile effort to ditch oil-based plastics from its bricks after finding that its new material led to higher carbon emissions, in a sign of the complex trade-offs companies face in their search for sustainability,” Richard Milne wrote.
But is this really a sustainability setback?
