For a few reasons, possibly the Danish aesthetic, or perhaps being a private family company not beholden to produce growth every quarter for shareholders, TLG are surprisingly ethical for a large company.
This plays out in a few different areas; their reluctance to produce modern weapons or war themed sets, their commitment to diversity, and their interest in the safety of their workers. But possibly the most impressive is their work towards being environmentally sustainable.
I feel LEGO starts out with a significant advantage in this area. The nature of a building system means the sets can follow along with fashion, while the bricks can be re-purposed into other models as well as free play, and this added to the fact that LEGO elements produced since 1958 are still compatible with modern bricks means that they don’t really become obsolete. I can’t imagine anyone throwing LEGO away. Our family still has all the LEGO we purchased for our kids (ie I’ve got it 🙂 ) whereas all of the other plastic toys they once owned are in landfill somewhere. If you drop a LEGO model it breaks into a heap of pieces, but the individual elements are usually fine. I think I’ve damaged a couple of Technic pins during building and play over my life, and I have found the odd crushed or over-chewed piece in bulk lots I’ve bought – but probably I’ve thrown out less than twenty pieces of the 43,733 I own. That’s a pretty good percentage for a plastic toy. The worldwide situation is probably not quite that good, as the LEGO goes from generation and is played with by less sympathetic kids, but I’d be confident to guess that over 85% of all the standard LEGO ever produced still exists in the world ready for use. Except for expensive jewellery, I doubt any other product matches it.
Nevertheless, it is mostly made from various plastics – the standard bricks are made from ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) which like many plastics is derived from crude oil. LEGO estimate that this sourcing accounts for a significant proportion of their carbon footprint. Also the scale is huge. They sell seventy billion pieces of plastic a year. These are packed into plastic bags, inside cardboard boxes then shipped all over the world.
A couple of years ago, LEGO committed to having all of its production based on sustainable materials by 2030. Because of the hard wearing, precision moulding ability and colour purity of ABS that’s a big, big call. In any case they do seem fully committed. They set up a “Sustainable Materials Centre” and employed a bunch of staff to work towards this goal.
One of the successes of this project is that they’ve replaced the polyethylene used in some of the softer elements such as plant leaves, car wash brushes, and dragon wings with a plant based substitute. This new plastic is chemically very similar to the original, so it has all the same qualities, but is derived from sugar cane rather than petroleum products.
I stumbled across an interesting podcast a few weeks ago – “Low Tox Life”. In this particular episode the host (Alexx Stuart) chats with Tim Brooks (Vice President – Corporate Responsibility) about the progress TLG are making towards their self-imposed goals in this area. He’s very open about the challenges and it’s an interesting chat. Even if you’re a LEGO enthusiast, I think you’ll learn something – for example I didn’t know they’d purchased two windfarms to offset their total electricity consumption. Have a listen.
Beam 'n' Pin 