Lego has abandoned its most prominent effort to remove petroleum-based plastics from its blocks after discovering that its new recycled material was more polluting, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
The Danish toymaker found that parts made from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (RPET) caused higher carbon emissions. "We have tested hundreds and hundreds of materials. It has not been possible to find a suitable material," Niels Christiansen, Lego's chief executive, told the Financial Times.
A Lego spokesman told Reuters that testing and development was continuing and that the company's goal was to make the toys from sustainable materials by 2032.
The company had started efforts in 2020 to replace its plastic bricks with sustainable materials. The difficulty was to find a material that was environmentally friendly but gave the same color, shine and sound as petroleum-based plastic bricks.