Lego abandons strategies to replace RPET with ABS in producing pieces

(MENAFN) A US news agency reported on Sunday that the largest toymaker in the world, Lego, has abandoned a plan to begin producing its trademark bricks using recycled beverage bottles rather than plastic derived from crude oil.

The Danish company, which annually produces billions of Lego pieces, reportedly discovered that producing bricks from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (RPET) would result in increased carbon emissions.

Lego began looking on a possible switch from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), which needs about 2kg of petroleum to make 1kg of plastic, to RPET in 2021. Approximately 80 percent of Lego blocks are made of ABS. It makes the bricks strong and simple to put together and take apart.

“We tested hundreds and hundreds of materials. It's just not been possible to find a material like that,” Lego CEO Niels Christiansen informed the news agency.

“It’s like trying to make a bike out of wood rather than steel,” the firm’s chief of sustainability, Tim Brooks, declared, stressing that switching ABS turns out to be much more difficult than they expected.

MENAFN26092023000045015839ID1107144788