LEGO Recycled Brick Is One Of TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2021

Saturday, November 13th, 2021 by Brickfinder

LEGO first announced that their success in using recycled PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) to produce new LEGO bricks back in June 2021 and now that little break through has been named one of TIME Magazine’s best inventions of 2021!

In The LEGO Group’s bid to be carbon neutral by 2022, they experimented with recycled plastics as an alternative material to using virgin ABS which purportedly reduces the carbon footprint by 65-70%.

About half of the world’s PET plastic—which is used to make plastic water bottles and containers—winds up in landfills. Someday soon, a good amount could end up in LEGO sets instead. The LEGO Group, which has vowed to make all LEGO bricks from sustainable sources by 2030, spent the past three years testing 250 variations of recycled PET materials and in June finally unveiled its prototype for a recycled PET brick that is nearly identical to the usual brick. That milestone achieved, the Danish toy giant hopes to integrate the recycled blocks into LEGO sets in the next 18 to 24 months. The impact could be considerable: the company uses some 100,000 metric tons of plastic resin in its products each year. —Rebecca Katzman

This is a pretty nice accolade for The LEGO Group as it joins the ranks of the Samsung flip phone and the L’Oreal Water shaver but don’t forget, this is the same publication that named Trump as “Person of the Year” so take it for what you will.

Either way, I do hope that LEGO is able to reduce their carbon footprint of the production of LEGO bricks as we all need to do our part to create a sustainable environment in the future for our kids to play in.