Lego Commits $150M to Find Sustainable Replacement for ABS Plastic

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (or ABS) is an oil-based material with significant environmental footprint. The iconic Lego toy bricks are made from ABS plastic. More than 60 billion Lego pieces were manufactured in 2014. For the last few years, the toy company has been making efforts to improve its product and packaging sustainability. In 2013, Lego began a partnership with WWF to help develop a plan for making its materials more sustainable. In 2014, the company ended a 50-year relationship with Shell after the oil giant’s controversial drilling in the Arctic.

Now Lego has announced that it will make an investment of $150 million to find an alternative material that will be sustainable and reduce the company’s carbon footprint. The company is hiring over a hundred new employees to work at its new Lego Sustainable Materials Center in Denmark. The company states that the new material will not change its quality or safety standards and will leave a positive impact on the planet.

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Vikas is a staff writer for the Sustainable Development news and editorial section on Justmeans. He is an MBA with 20 years of managerial and entrepreneurial experience and global travel. He is the author of "The Power of Money" (Scholars, 2003), a book that presents a revolutionary monetary economic theory on poverty alleviation in the developing world. Vikas is also the official writer for an international social project for developing nations "Decisions for Life" run in collaboration between the ILO, the University of Amsterdam and the Indian Institute of Management.