Lego blocks
Lego, the toy giant, is planning to put bricks made from recycled drinks bottles on shelves within two years.
Lego makes about 3,500 different bricks and shapes, but faces difficulties of coming up with a sustainable product that can last years – decades, even.
The target is to find a product good enough that people don’t notice the difference, said Lego’s Tim Brooks. He did not specify how many of its bricks will contain recycled material.
But he added that Lego wants to start using the bottle-made ones “as soon as possible”.
Brooks, Lego’s vice president of sustainability, said the two types of blocks should fit together and be interchangeable like any Lego product.
The next stage will be to add colors to the prototype bricks, and test them with children and adult fans,.
Lego said it would initially get soft drinks bottles from the US to make its new plastic toy parts. It said plastic recovered from the oceans would not be suitable as it is typically too degraded.
