Lego Struggles to Find a Plant-Based Plastic That Clicks

https://www.wsj.com/articles/lego-struggles-to-find-a-plant-based-plastic-that-clicks-11560331800?mod=rsswn

by lord_sudo • 7 years ago

51 58 7 years ago

cosmodisk2• 7 years ago

I appreciate the initiative, however even without it, Lego isn't something that gets thrown away after a few months use,if at all.

extropy• 7 years ago

Hmm I'm not following. This is about moving away from oil dependance, not making bricks bio degenerable.

nerfhammer2• 7 years ago

I think that the idea is it matters less if it's not a disposable product.

vbuwivbiu• 7 years ago

hopefully they will move away from oil but nevertheless Lego is the only product I can think of I don't mind lasting for millennia for future peoples to enjoy

Hedja• 7 years ago

What do you base that on? Lego has plenty of small individual sets that get played with by kids, broken apart, bits go missing and eventually they get binned.

pkulak• 7 years ago

Sure... and then Starbucks sells 43 more drinks in the next 100ms and completely overwhelms your example.

benologist• 7 years ago

Even if you keep it for decades it's got millennia left to be someone else's trash and landfill, so it's still worth substituting something that biodegrades.

thrower1233• 7 years ago

No thanks. The older bricks break down and become brittle and discolored if exposed to sunlight enough already.

tonyedgecombe3• 7 years ago

My parents still have Lego from my childhood in the loft. The only parts that have degraded are electrical.

I’m not sure what we will do with it when they pass, it has little or no value.

Perhaps it would make sense to recycle it.

thrower1233• 7 years ago

You might be surprised at the value. There's quite a collector's market for older Lego sets, if you check sites like Bricklink.

kwhitefoot• 7 years ago

Give it away on FreeCycle or similar, put a free ad somewhere. someone will take it.

Don't just throw it away.

docker_up• 7 years ago

Lego has more value than you think. You can at least sell it by the pound for pretty good price.

https://www.vocativ.com/underworld/crime/lego-heists/index.h...

jacquesm7• 7 years ago

it has little or no value.

You are so wrong about that. Vintage sets go for many times their original worth, and some parts are worth more than you'd think reasonable for a little piece of plastic.

beenBoutIT• 7 years ago

'Recycling' in this case means giving them to some child or charity that gives things to poor kids. LEGOs are an extremely powerful learning tool for young people.

magic_beans• 7 years ago

That's very anecdotal. Just because you might have been attached to Legos, doesn't mean everyone is.

jacquesm7• 7 years ago

There is a near insatiable market for second hand lego. So even if you're not attached to it plenty of people value it enough that you'll be able to recoup a substantial fraction of your initial outlay. Lego holds its value better than most other commodities.

zubspace• 7 years ago

The first lego sets I had are still great. They are more basic and allow more open play than the current sets in my opinion.

The lego pieces today feel a bit better and are easier to connect and pull apart. But I do not like the way Legos transitioned into Collector-Pieces/Merchandizing toys. There's just too much of it and most of them limit your fantasy.

toper-centage• 7 years ago

Yes, but little pieces end up inevitably lost. And for a company as big as Lego, it becomes a moral responsibility to look for solutions - even if each customer only loses one tiny block per year, that's millions of little indestructible plastic pieces. But it would be ideal if they would biodegrade in certain conditions like after 20 years under the sea.

byron_fast2• 7 years ago

I doubt their customers care. They should make things their customers care about.

FredDollen• 7 years ago

It's more about virtue signaling

AaronFriel• 7 years ago

That's a rather cynical accusation. What if the people signaling this virtue are doing so because they genuinely believe in it?

ravenstine• 7 years ago

Why would you assume that? Granted, there is a lot of corporate virtue signalling, and it's existed since time immemorial, but I don't get the sense Lego is necessarily virtue signalling in this case, or at least virtue signalling in a way that isn't genuine. One reason I say this is because it's a family-owned company and really aren't comparable to a corporate giants like Procter & Gamble(which happens to be known for blatant virtue signalling), Coca Cola, or Disney, to name a few.

I don't think it's farfetched for someone in charge at Lego to see value in biodegradable plastic, and there really isn't much of a reason for them not to research into and use biodegradable plastic if it was a viable alternative to whatever they're currently using.

Now, if they were making commercials about biodegradable Legos that don't exist, or "toxic masculinity", or saving the whales, then you could definitely say that Lego is virtue signalling. But I don't see that here.

Sohcahtoa82• 7 years ago

$150 million is a pretty considerable amount to spend on virtue signaling.

byron_fast2• 7 years ago

It is virtue signalling.

As someone who has spent thousands of dollars on Lego, if I see "Biodegradable!" splash on the box I'm going to think twice. I painted my Lego, played with it in water, and I could still give it to my kids in the original condition. We can't know that any new Lego will perform the same way.

jacquesm7• 7 years ago

The whole power of Lego is that it is a heirloom toy, it stays in the family. In mine now for three generations and likely more to come.

desuyone• 7 years ago

I don't really get the point, if you make bio plastic that lasts as long as normal plastic then won't it have the same effect on our plastic waste problem. Also, it is not like taking some oil out of the earth together with the tons of oil that are taken out for fuel (probably from a thickness that isn't really used for much else) will have a worse effects on our environment than clearing out enormous pieces of land to grow all these plants.

tracker12• 7 years ago

I think there's actually a few reasons why they are investing.

1) it makes them look like they care about green earth stuff, not saying they don't, but the marketing image is priceless.

2) it's potentially valuable IP that can be licensed to other companies, even where it doesn't work for lego, it might be a great fit more broadly.

3) Having it wear down more quickly means more responsible waste, also it ensures the product may instead of lasting decades, only last a few years.

4) Eventually crude oil will run out, and even before that will get much more costly to use as source material.

specialist• 7 years ago

If they create a suitable plastic substitute, they'll make a mint off the technology alone.

Lego Struggles to Find a Plant-Based Plastic That Clicks

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